Does the hero get the check?

by Brian Murphy

Brian Murphy, Chicago street and soul, battles the usual suspects and crime tourists (writers who rely on Google for research and life experience –atmosphere) with his own home spun, authentic punk, crime fiction. He publishes in Thuglit.com, Pulp Pusher - UK’s finest Noir and premier thug venue - Off beat Pulp, and when he’s feeling soft and silly, getting in touch with his feminine side, he’s published poetry at Adelle Stripe’s, “Straight From The Fridge,” a London-based, “Brutalists” Publication. He also has an advice column he believes strongly has helped no one, at “Out Of The Gutter” a Guerilla Convict publication. When all's said and done, he’ll be most remembered for his days in the tropics – Columbia and most recently, Costa Rica, where he had previously owned the bar and night spot in Alajuala, fondly, infamously and forever more known as the “Bar Sin Problemas,” The No Problem Bar.
Contact Brian

 

CHAPTER 1

Chicago: December 3, 1991

You’re seeing a support beam falling onto an arm through dancing flames. You just know you’re too late. Again.

Then, everything goes silent. Everything, that is, except for the beam crackling and what you’ll swear forever, is a child screaming. Begging you to come and save her. You’re moving closer to that arm.

The world on fire must have finally decided to let you back into its madhouse of sound. You’ve got your mask off now. You still hear screaming somewhere behind the flame’s laughter, but part of your brain argues that ghosts don’t scream.

Only instinct warns you that other firefighters are close – somewhere behind you. Maybe they hear the screaming? You doubt it.

Just another dead nigger. The joke in your neighborhood always seems to be that they take kindly to fires. They’re already mostly burnt. And besides, what’s the difference?

But you already know that answer. The difference is, this nigger died on your watch.

You’ve stopped in your tracks. The screams seem to be coming, now, from below. You feel someone grabbing at you - at your shoulders. Still, you stare right through the flames at that dislocated, little, mangled brown arm.

Then it’s gone and your partners are dragging you out of the room just seconds before the floor caves in and the arm is gone, consumed by the fire - maybe exactly like what’s left, if anything, of the body below – the owner of the arm. The child you were too late to save.

She must have fallen in pieces. You’ll know later, and you’ll never forget. Fucking right you won’t. It becomes cloth - fabric spun and woven together, maybe already embedded in your soul’s mosaic - thirteen years, all memory shards split into each day waking… each day closing your eyes - to sleep, to cry, to forget. It’s the film being played behind your eyes. Cal Picha, the firefighter.

The film? It never stops. Not like they say it does – the older firefighters. Maybe with them it stops. Maybe with them it’s not even a film they paid to watch. Maybe with them, it’s not ever there.

Yeah, the brothers at your firehouse… others – guys you worked with before you came to Chinatown, are somehow beyond feeling guilt. They do a remarkable job – and just like any surgeon, sometimes they lose a life.

Sometimes they know better than to feel – surgeons, firefighters. Otherwise, they’d have a difficult time keeping their hands steady, their stomachs from turning inside-out.

The saddened surgeon? Well maybe his hands would start to shake. And the Firefighter? Maybe he’d stop seeing so much at the fire. Maybe he’d slow down and his brothers would pick up the slack. Maybe he’d fall and burn. Worse, maybe he’d let his brothers get taken away by the fire.

There’s a deadly order - a simple madness to a fire, just so long as you don’t think past the flame. At the fire, there is only now. You get in fast, you do your job, and you get out just as fast. Get in, get out.

And after the fire? Some swagger. Some retreat into a safe place inside. Some regulate their breathing to slow down a heart, beating out of control. Some drink their balls off, the stink still on them. Some, they just go home and, awake or asleep, they keep seeing the same film.

This time, the film is of a body - split apart by burning timber, twisted aluminum, and sharp shards of glass and ceramic. This time the film is one more reminder that you were too slow getting up to the top floor today and because of that, you missed your chance to end this insufferable losing streak – to finally, notch up another “save.”

You’ve heard your wife tell you again and again how hatred can eat away at a man’s insides - cloud his judgment. It’s becoming a toss up though, where the hate actually comes from. It can’t be the job? Could it just plain and simply be how you feel about yourself when you’re no longer the hero?

Just like you can’t stop the film from playing, you also can’t stop that hate. That’s a fire all on its own, burning inside.

Who do you hate more? Yourself? The director directing these films or the kid for getting ripped apart? You’re half-way sure that the director must enjoy reminding you of all these failures. A regular comedian. After all, everyone loves to see a hero fail.

Your wife also has always told you that your job is to help people because they’re people in trouble, in danger. Black or white, they’re people, not trophies.

Sure she knows how you feel about niggers. They’re not people half the time. If they were? Forget about it. They’re the reason for most of the fires on your watch.

And trophies? Is that how you really feel? Because you’ve dragged more live bodies out of fires for the Department in the last thirty years than any other firefighter? All you know is that when you were saving lives, even if they happened to be black people, you were still feeling like a million bucks.

How could she know? She’s never dragged a body out before the world erupted in black smoke and heat. She’s never felt that insane power you’ve felt, coursing through your veins – stronger than passion, lust. She’s never gotten that high.

And now? It’s become a personal issue for you. It’s also your sanity, lately. Well, of course it is. These ghosts don’t seem to be haunting anyone else that you know of.

Death is only final for the one who has died, not for those who are left behind. Who’s really more fortunate? Ask a ghost, if you can get one to talk. Cal hasn’t been able to do that. The soundtrack to the film behind his eyes, the one that ghosts move and dance to doesn’t include dialogue.

The pros? They tell you that there is nothing but the fire - the moment.

You leave the job telling yourself that you couldn’t have possibly gotten through those burning walls in time. Fuckin' tinderbox anyways, ain’t it? She was a goner. Dimes to doughnuts you’ll never know.

But you’ll always see that wasted, lifeless arm. You know that.

This house, in Chinatown, you’ve been here for a lifetime of fires. It’s been busier in the last four years than maybe ever before. Someone came and made a movie about firefighter’s in Chicago. A Hollywood movie.

The movie just came out. Everyone from the House went to see it a few months ago. Of course the pundits – firefighters, one and all, said, “It ain’t nothin’ like that.”

Life ain’t a Hollywood movie. Life is the film behind your eyes. Plenty of action. Plenty of real. Real is burning flesh and crashing timber. Real ain’t Hollywood.

After the fire:

It’s maybe your eyes. That’s what you tell yourself. Those are Christmas lights out there - remote green and red twinkles, not fires. You’re bugging out.

Crisp 5 degrees outside - then the wind chill to knock that notch of freeze well down below zero. After below zero, cold is bitter and brutal. Like a fire, it controls and takes everything over in its wake.

The sky glows from a million downtown lights. Its blackened blues and purples look cold as death.

There’s always fires when it’s this cold. Sometimes people don’t make it out. Sometimes it’s children. Always the poor ones. Sometimes old people who couldn’t move quick enough. Sometimes it’s just a bad luck position. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the cold brings fire to the poor. Or, like some of the guys say, “The poor bring fire to the cold.”

“God I need a break.”

You see that burnt, brown arm out on the street now. Disembodied, it waves. You slam on your brakes, only at the last minute, looking behind you. No other cars. You’re stopped - in the middle of the street. That’s when you see the girl. She’s left her arm. Naked, scorched and blistered, she passes right through your jeep. A sudden stench makes you gag.

You shiver uncontrollably. Opening the car door, you lean out and vomit. The film is real. It’s live and in color. Its fragrance is burnt toast – worse, flesh and bones – hair.

This is what it’s been like for you ever since the first casualty of fire – the first loss of life, before you became the fire’s casualty. Then, after a bad luck run, of fires, and bodies melting, you started to blame yourself for being a lousy firefighter, too slow, too fat, too late. When you couldn’t save a life, and then, not even your own. When you couldn’t be a hero.

Your cell phone is ringing. Before you realize, before you can grab at it where it’s propped in the cup holder, it has already stopped. Outside, on Canal Street, you drive by a man bundled up, looking like the Michelin Tire guy – just a walking bundle of rags, assorted coats, scarves and mittens, huffing and puffing, his breath turning to steam like an old engine, chugging along, impervious to the dangers of weather and bad luck.

He’s pushing a shopping cart piled high with wooden skids… holding onto them against the fierce wind coming from the east – from the lake… he’s holding onto them like it was Captain Kidd’s treasure. Maybe for him it is.

Right now, as you drive past, there isn’t a car in sight. It’s just him on the wide concrete, trying to get something big and slow somewhere, before he freezes. Steam swirls up from manhole covers on the street like impossibly soft dervishes - spinning and then all at once, disappearing into the cold night air.

Jesus fucking Christ. It’s gotta be after seven in the evening. One hundred degrees below zero. I hope that poor bastard isn’t going to burn those skids to keep warm, start half the fucking city on fire.

Man I’m tired. A guy gets tired, he doesn’t want to get a call from the House just as he jumps in bed. “Cal – the city’s on fire. We need you to pull a few more days.”

Your cell rings again, making you jump. It rings twice, then stops. You want distractions. Anymore, the phone is rarely that. The phone lately is pain.

The last two days Sheri’s been calling practically on the hour. You remember when she used to call and you got a hard-on. Before this job. Before you married her. Before you ever cared about being right, about doing something good and noble. Before you ever wanted to be a hero.

Now, when she calls, it’s a battle – a complex sound-effect to the film behind your eyes; sirens and bells ringing, wailing, clanking, and her fucking shrill screeches. Now, you don’t know what’s worse, a building falling on your head or her reminding you over and over what a loser you are.

Last night you told her to leave you the fuck alone while you’re at the House. You realized that maybe you weren’t even really telling her – more like you were begging. So you turned your phone off and got lost in a card game. Today, you got lost in a fire – watching a dead body disintegrate.

Lately, her threats are harder to ignore. “You’re going to seed,” she tells you.

Now, you look at your belly. It’s not going to seed, you think. It’s fucking climbing out from where it’s supposed to meet your belt. Climbing over the belt and trying to massage your steering wheel. Or vice a versa.

Not exactly G-Q. You try and remember if you ever were. All you can come up with now, driving down Parnell Street, is that everything from the past seems foggy. Bruised fruit. Almost delicious, but scary too.

You hate to think you can be afraid, so you laugh. “Fucking Sheri. She’d never leave me. She’s got it sweet. Me always here ? Outta her hair?” but you know she doesn’t see things this way.

Her list of complaints is long. Maybe as long as it’s been since you’ve made love to her. Maybe that’s one of her complaints. Maybe she has no idea how difficult it is to keep a hard-on when you’re smelling burning flesh still, from the last bad 3 Alarm.

Or when you’re hearing her frustrated sighs in bed. She starts whispering encouragement, then louder, but it’s all one fucked up house mix – the soundtrack and the film you’re seeing - and your wife, wishing you were someone else, or she was maybe somewhere else. Always what you both can’t have – the way it used to be.

At least Sheri hasn’t accused you of cheating on her.

Someone in the neighborhood would have told her if you were. You live in Bridgeport. Just a mile from the Fire House. No one can keep their mouth shut in the neighborhood, that’s a bet.

You grew up at 27th and Normal. When you were a kid, the fellas on 26th Street - bookies, the silent guys and thugs, they all liked you for a boxer – Golden Gloves. You were thirteen. You had fast hands. Then there was that one day you got laid down by a park district coon and never made it back up off the mat. An alderman, huggermugger with the old Daley, came and saw you after the fight.

He was a serious guy. They say he was mobbed up. You don’t know nothing about that. He was a fight admirer, that’s all you can say. He told you maybe he’d have something for you when you got older. A bone crusher? A broom sweep in the 1st Ward, on “Street’s and Sanitation?” You never asked. You never cared about a city job.

Years later, no one in the neighborhood ever seemed to forget those fast hands of yours. But through the eighties, it’s a sure thing no one stepped up to you about any sort of job - legal or otherwise.

Still though, you had respect. White Cadillacs would drive by – faces obliterated by huge cigars, windows slowly rolling down and a suited arm hanging out, Rolex watch catching the sun, beefy hands waving. You never lost a fight on the street. Maybe, who knows, you would have gone the distance if you hadn’t gotten knocked cold by a shine.

Just like everyone in the neighborhood knew about that fight, they know about pretty much, sooner or later, everything else that happens…who dies, who goes to prison, who gets a better job at City Hall, who’s selling shit….

No, Sheri knows you haven’t been seeing any other woman. Maybe she even begins to hate you a little bit, knowing that. At least, then she’d have someone to blame.

Maybe inside, she wonders if it’s her? If she’s lost something.

Then her hot Italian temper boils and blood flows hot as a 3, maybe 4 Alarm fire, and nothing you do is right. Forget about bed. She wants you to know there is nothing, period.

It seems everything she loved about you has gone south. Like she tells you she’s going to go. South. No looking back.

“Fuck it,” you think. Tonight you’ll make it up to her. Christmas is just weeks away. Maybe you’ll talk stones. Not kidney. Not the Rolling Stones. Gemstones. There’s money in the bank. At least there’s that.

“Yeah,” you tell yourself, “tonight, stop off on Halstead and buy a bottle of wine. Order out. It’s only 8:30 anyways. Plenty of time. Get close.”

You’re already three hours late. That’s when you realize that you’ve been driving all over the Southside since you left the Fire House. “Oh I am but really fuckin' shot. Three hours? Like a black out. Like it was minutes ago when I dropped the suit. Jumped in the shower. Cried.”

“Hey Smooth!”

A truck has just pulled up. It’s your older brother and three guys you grew up with. The Mogees’ – crazy Croatians.

“Smooth!” Your brother Mikie’s out of his truck. You’d been sitting at the stop sign - something you just realize. They’d pulled up behind your Jeep. Mikie’s fucked up again. Coked out. What else is new?

The last thing you want him to see, is you bugging out at a stop sign. Rolling down your window you reach back behind and grab a map, then drop it on your lap. You realize what you’ve just done. It’s absurd. You’re in the neighborhood. What the fuck would you need a map for?

“Mikie, what’s up?”

“Smooth. Let’s go have a few cocktails. What’s wit the map? You goin’ fishin’?”

“Naw, I just wanted ta see if you were, ya know, maybe listed here. The home that Mikie Picha built.”

“Maybe you see my picture at the post office smooth. Not on some fucking map. You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Whasss up?”

“Cal! Let’s trip the night. I got that feelin’, ya know? Like we need ta get thrown outta bars that ain’t been built yet. You look bad, bro. What? You seen a ghost?” He laughs. He knows. “Smooth, I’m fuckin'’ wit choo. I’d fuck wit a crack on the wall. Ain’t no thing.”

You wanted distractions?

You’ve already forgotten about the wine, about making up with your wife. All you want to do now is to forget period. Mikie can have that effect on you. Insanity doesn’t necessarily run in your family, but Mikie, well, he’s got to be certifiable by now. And the guys he’s with? Forget about it. They’re the closest that flesh and blood can come to cartoon.

Richie Red is behind Mikie. He wants to shake your hand, only it’s your hand now that’s shaking. He says, “Steady, Ace. They broke the shake machine at Burger King this morning. Maybe you want ta moonlight? I know the manager. Get ya in, easy-like. Ha!”

Richie slaps your hand and starts laughing. “Oh I fuckin'’ crack myself up. You hear that, Mikie? Shake machine. Oh kill me. Hey Cal. Forget about it. Bad day, yeah? Let’s slam some at the Lem Bar.”

Cars are slowly pulling alongside. People you all know - waving, honking horns. There’s the odd Chinaman wondering if he’s going the wrong way down a one way street. Still Mikie, Richie and Alfonse are out goofing next to your jeep. It’s freezing cold and these knuckleheads are out on the street in their light leathers. They flip off the Chinaman.

Mikie: Always with the tough guys. And there are some very tough guys in the neighborhood still. Tough Irish, Italian, Polish, Croatian, Mexican. The neighborhood has gotten big face-lifts, but don’t let the new buildings, homes, businesses - God forbid, yogurt shops, fool you. This is old school. Bridgeport – you can laugh and joke, but if you want to play, you had better be a player.

Mikie is definitely a player. You were too – once. Before the fires. Before you made that choice to play hero in the flames, and not ride the neighborhood for all your tough guy rep. could get you.

Rep don’t get you shit. It don’t pay the rent. Fighting fires got you a hero rep the first eight years. It’s been down hill and filled with nothing but ghosts since – ghosts of those who didn’t make it and ghosts of who you used to be.

Instead of fighting the “Park Boys” or the project niggers who came into the neighborhood, you decided that you wanted to fight fires. Now, they seemed to be winning.

The boys get back in their truck, squeal tires and skid on old, black ice, the back end of the big Ford swinging side to side dangerously until knob tires grip onto straight asphalt.

You watch the Ford finally correct itself on 31st street, just missing the oncoming. Your window is still down and you can hear those nuts ahead of you whooping and yelling. It’s been a long time since you felt real laughter in your gut. Not fake waitress stuff, not laughter for a camera, but real bellows inside that need to come out.

You hardly feel the cold rushing against your ears and face. Distracted?

You’re a new man. How’s that for distraction?

Already car lengths ahead, your brother’s friends are still hanging heads out their windows, screaming at you, at shapeless bundles walking slowly down Halstead, at 340 lb. Roxy, selling news papers from the wooden shack on the corner. Like a pack of wolves, they’re howling at the moon – a distorted ball of white in the sky.

You follow, already forgotten, the fire, your wife. Maybe even tomorrow.

 

###

 

The Lem Bar on Loomis is packed.

You’re laughing when you pull up.

Hard to say how long Mikie and his boys have been there. You must have taken the long way. To find the answer why, against your better judgment, you flash a memory.

That’s it, it was that fucking ghost again, returned once you’d taken a left on Archer Avenue. Scared the shit out of you. So you made a u-turn and drove east, even though you knew you couldn’t outrun it.

Your brother’s truck faded in your rearview mirror, but then, you weren’t exactly looking behind you. And you weren’t exactly driving slow once you headed east on Archer towards Chinatown.

You were being chased again.

As fast as you drove, that armless, smoldering mess kept up, floating even with your driver side window. This time, though, you could see white broken teeth. So at least the ghost was smiling.

At least that’s what you remember thinking.

You shot down Wentworth, squealing tires - then turned onto 22nd Street. When you passed the Fire House, the ghost just vanished. The streets were empty. You got back onto Archer Avenue. A headache that had started to come on, feeling like sharp, cold steel between your eyes, stopped just as quickly as it had come.

The ghost was smiling, you thought. That’s when it had disappeared.

Like your headache.

So you told yourself to smile again - to remember how you’d been laughing earlier. You wondered if this wasn’t some kind of a twisted oriental menopause you’d picked up in one of the many Chinese restaurants you frequently ate in. That made you laugh. Can a man get Oriental menopause? From a toilet seat, maybe?

By the time you finally pull up to your spot in front of the bar – the “No Parking” spot that your firefighter’s decal seems to provide immunity from beat cops and the city tow truck, your brother is outside with two other guys, smoking a joint.

You’re still laughing about the Oriental menopause and decide there’s got to be an expert on the subject sitting here at the bar. Not your brother. He’s not old enough anyways. Don’t you have to be over fifty or something?

Mikie is also laughing. You can hear him rattling and gusty, like a big wind that just won’t stop blowing. Like a Dexter Gordon solo, all dope and no worry - no hurry. And if you had to describe your brother, that’s the first thing you’d say. He’s without a worry, in a world where worry makes the wheels go round, makes you get out of bed to go chase the dollar.

In your brother’s world, he sells this and that – large and small. Powders and chunks. In his world of hustle and dodge, money is only paper. If he owes a bookie or another dealer – a bigger dealer, he makes them wait. Seems they all know better. Better to push him, that is.

He’s sometimes, everything you wish you could be now. No wife. No reason to look back except when he’s drunk and remembering every insane and hilarious moment of both your lives. Or, the sort of looking back in a bar when he turns around to his ever-present circle of hanger-ons and admirers, then says in a cartoon voice, “Never underestimate a scoundrel”

But looking back at mistakes or sadness? Like they say in the neighborhood, “Forget about it.”

Ritchie, not Ritchie “Red,” but another Ritchie - Richie “the Mexican,” Ralph’s moonfaced twin, is howling in pain as he grabs onto a bandage wrapped around his nose like a paper mache light bulb. It’s leaking blood.

Mikie screams, “Don’t worry. You still got a nostril at least. You can breath. Your wife won’t box your face when you get home tonight. You got it made!”

At the mention of wife, you shudder, then tell yourself it’s the cold. Besides, there is a major story here. Your brother is holding his gut, laughing. He drops the joint and while Richie and his brother Ralph stoop, looking for it, Mikie steps over and throws his arms around you.

The door to the bar opens and two girls stumble out, dancing to the last chords of Humble Pie’s 'Thirty Days in The Hole'.

You suddenly are very thirsty, but Mikie has you in a bear hug, lips pressed against your ears and you start to get the story. How Ritchie practically lost his nose.

The other two lunatics just found the joint and are using three lighters to get it going again. It’s soaking wet from the slush they fished it out from.

A cop drives by slowly, rolls his window down, sees it’s you, flashes top lights, beeps, and squeals off.

This fucking neighborhood. Growing up here? It’s practically a passkey to the other side of legal – what with the 26th street crew - a major earner for the Chicago Outfit, and then all the other street crews, dope cowboys, and city workers who got it made - all guys that these cops grew up with, drank and partied their balls off with? Forget about it.

Sometimes it’s hard to even find a gray area. Just as long as no one kills anyone on their watch. Well, that’s even happened from time to time.

You wave them off and try to understand what it is your brother is screaming about, slobbering all over your ear. You tell Ritchie to go in and bring you out a Heineken.

He runs off and into the bar like he already owes you a hundred favors – probably does. Still, Mikie and you get plenty of respect around here, that’s for sure. It’s only because no one in the neighborhood has seen the ghosts. Those you let crash and burn. Who’d be the Bridgeport hero then, you wonder?

But the story?

“Fuck sake, Mikie, what happened to Richie’s nose?’

“Cal. You may not know this – you being respectable and hardly around any of the fellas lately so of course you don’t know that Richie – big lizard collector, well, he’s got this, what they call a baby gator – baby, cause it’s small enough to eat small things – I guess. A fucking lizardologist, I ain’t. Not yet, anyways. Ha!”

You listen to Mikie tell a story, you have to wait for him to stop laughing. Loud and irreverent, it’s timed with a comedic clock in his twisted brain. There’s that and the constant high five he demands from his listeners. A five minute story of his and you can expect raw hands. The drunker you get, the harder it is to get that solid, resounding clap – dead onto his palm. Tonight, out in the cold, each high-five hurts. It’s compulsory though. It’s distractions.

Richie is back with your beer. It’s unopened so you have to use his Bic lighter - wedge the bottom against your thumb and under the cap, send it sailing down Loomis. You take a long, deep swig.

Ritchie is fiddling with the bandage on his nose. You tell him to stop fidgeting with that disgusting rag or “you swear on tacos,” you will rip the whole fucking thing off of his nose, not knowing that he may not even have a nose because Mikie hasn’t gotten that far - with the story.

“Now,” You say, “what exactly does he do with this, ah, baby gator?”

Mikie looks at Ritchie and his brother, gives Ralph a package of coke and tells them both to go back in the bar – have some respect and do a whack or two in the men’s room.

“And lock the fuckin' door. Fritz is a little gun shy since Ernie and Motzie got popped with half a kilo out in front the bar a few months ago.” Fritz owns the “Lem Bar.

“Respect! You noseless wonder!!”

You finish your beer. Distractions? Fucking right. You’re already starting to feel like someone else. Someone you always liked being. A kid on the corner. You grab at your brother’s collar.

“Ritchie’s nose! What?”

“Oh yeah.” Mikie shrugs. “Ya see, bro, Ritchie, he loves to share. Gets his dog drunk, his cat high, so he figures it’s a drag for this little gator pacing back and forth waiting for small rodents to drop down from the sky. Ritchie, he’s a hunmani……”

You scream. “Enough! Mikie – you ain’t fucking Ernest Hemingway. Get to the point.”

Mikie shrugs again, but this time he looks a little embarrassed. He wanted the story to have color, maybe even a life of its own because shit like this – even in his world, doesn’t happen every day.

“Aight. You want the facts?

“ Ritchie took hold of his gator outta the box like, got that gnarled little dinosaur face close to his lips and blew a massive power hit a reefer into what he figured would be the gator’s nostrils.

“Yeah, maybe the lizard did get high, but then, he somehow got his mouth open and teeth, Cal? You can’t believe how many teeth this little guy has. Bunches. And bunches a them snapped, then bit half of Ritchie’s nose off. Maybe so high, the little gator got the munchies!

“Took him to the emergency room at Mercy Hospital and whatta you know?”

You are already laughing. You might even puke. You are afraid to ask. But you do.

“So what Mikie? Channel Seven is there and they want to interview the stupidest man in Bridgeport… which is a stretch considering there must be hundreds?”

Mikie lights an Antonio Cleopatra and waits for the tip to get bright red. He talks out the side of his face.

“Naw. Whatta ya think?

“The nurse from emergency, she wants to know how all this mayhem and brutality has happened so when Ritchie tells her about the power hit to the gator, she asks if he happens to know a guy who last Friday night, also from Bridgeport, came in, dusted like a fucking door mat - babooched on PCP, with his hand the size of a baseball mitt.

“Cal! Oh fuck me running, of course Ritchie knows. Because this guy with the hand poisoned is his brother Ralph. Runs in the family – this love they got for dangerous pets. Only, they forget that they are dangerous, or sumthin…’ fuck if I know.” Mikie turns both palms upward and puffs merrily on his stogie. He thinks for a minute, then continues.

“Ya see, Ritchie reached into the fish tank to pet his poisonous fish. He’s dusted, right? Thinks it’s a gerbil.”

You spit out a mouthful of beer, gagging and laughing.

Mikie looks at you like you’re nuts, then throws his hand up, laughs as you crack it and howl in pain, then in between cigar chomping he says, “The nurse shook her head. I mean she shook it like she already knew. Sure they look alike – I mean two Mexican midgets with moon shaped faces. But, Christ. What happened to confidentiality?”

“Mikie, let’s go in. Keep them two lunatics away from me. Just you, me, and anyone else half sane.”

“ Fuck could that be? Hey bro, you got some money?”

Mikie will ask you for money no matter how stacked he is. He’s never broke. It’s an old bit. After a night out with your brother, if you don’t watch your money, you wake up with merely lint left in your pockets. There never seems to be a payback from your brother.

Like he always tells you, he is the payback.

“No, Mikie, I thought that’s why you asked me to come along. I thought you were lookin’ out tonight. Thought you were throwin’ down.”

Mikie looks hurt. He hangs his head down, then blows a raspberry out his nose – chunky with coke that didn’t dissolve.

“Cal, whattaya think? I got dough. Hey, I seen Sheri leave the hair salon on 31st earlier today. With Sammy Puscandra. Didn’t want to say nothin’.”

“ But you just did, ain’t it? Last thing I need. I need to worry about nothin’ tonight, yeah? Only shots lined up and a few bad pool games. Just keep those fucking moon pie faced Mexican’s away from me, aight?”

“Yeah, bro. But, Sheri? Sammy is a scum and a – well, talk is, he fell a little behind last week – betting his own book . Talk is – maybe he’s a lot behind. Maybe so far he can’t walk fucking forward without fallin’.

“Talk is, maybe he gets whacked, although you didn’t hear this from me, it’s just dat – well, Sheri? Wouldn’t want her to catch a …you know what I mean. Fuckin' neighborhood, ain’t it? She seems, well, she seems kinda antsy lately, like….”

“Mikie. You say one more thing about Sheri tonight, I’ll kill you. Plain and simple.”

He grabs you, and the warmth from the kiss on your cheek makes you suddenly realize it’s probably this maniac that keeps you steady, keeps you sane. That is, if seeing armless, burnt bodies roaming 0 temperature streets – kid’s that are supposed to be dead already, can be considered sane… if you want to call hands shaking like a Pentecostal preacher, the hands of a sane man – a firefighter.

But like Mikie always tells you, “Yeah, only think. When you go kooky for coco-puffs after a fire or sumthin’, where you gonna be if I get whacked or take a dope fall – get spanked with time by Judge Do it all Paul?

“Then who’s gonna listen to your ghost stories?”

Breaking away from your brother, you head into the bar. “C’mon,” you say, “let’s get outta this fucking cold, bro.

###

Copyright © Brian Murphy, 2008

Click here for Brian Murphy’s interview with Marc Lecard