"She was screwin' Kennedy and Sam Gandlefini," TC said.
"Gandelfini is the guy on the Sopranos. He's too young to screw Marilyn Monroe," Jerry Number One said.
"How old do you gotta be to screw?" Jerry Number Two said.
"Boy, it was DiMaggio getting screwed," Rocco said.
"Huh?" TC said.
And so it went. Meet Rocco, TC, Jerry Number One, and Jerry Number Two, otherwise known as the Fearsome Foursome, AJ's brain trust. They were always here and always engaged in inane conversation. Usually it was just them, me and my cop friend, Kelley, and once in awhile my landlord, Dr. Rudy. AJ slid a Schlitz long neck in front of me before I opened my mouth. The TV was on Classic Sports with Bill Walton overenunciating about how he's still depressed about losing to Notre Dame. The Foursome moved on to current events.
"Awful thing about that fire," TC said.
"Yeah, don't forget about the box and the cans," Rocco said.
"What the hell is it with every place having a box full of canned goods for soldiers? Are these guys really dying for oversalted canned meat?"
"I don't think you have the right attitude Duffy. I was in the service and I loved a can of Spam once in a while. Took my mind off the battle," Rocco said.
"That fire was college guys, wasn't it?" TC asked.
"Yeah, college age guys at ROTC training-that's rough," Jerry Number One, said.
"Did they know what caused it?" I asked.
"Something about an electrical short or something like that, but some terrorist outfit has said they were responsible," Rocco said.
"One of my clients who's a little on the paranoid side told me there would be a fire today. He's into all the government conspiracy crap. Iraq left him a little fucked up," I said.
"You don't believe in government conspiracies, Duff?" Jerry Number Two said.
"I don't know. I don't think about it much."
"You think Oswald acted alone? You think we didn't know Pearl Harbor was about to happen? You probably think we landed on the moon," Jerry Number Two said, pausing to sip his Cosmopolitan for dramatic effect. Red stains from the Cosmo dotted his tie-dye.
"I don't know, Jer. I'm just a guy with a headache, drinking Schlitz."
"That's exactly what they want, you know," Jerry Number two said.
I decided it was okay if I thought Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, at least for tonight. My head started to throb a bit and the Schlitz seemed to be hurting more than helping. I didn't want to make the shift to light speed and start on the Jim Beam, so I thought I might cut my losses and head home early. Before I could get up, the talking head on the TV started interviewing some guy through a split screen set up. The guy's name was Dr. Theodore Martin and he headed up the team of crisis counselors dispatched to deal with the stress of the survivors on the campus. I paused for a moment when the guy mentioned something about how important it was to ventilate the emotions involved in a trauma as soon as possible. He went on about how debriefing was crucial to dealing with such an event. I had let the Schlitz help me debrief my own stressful day, and now it was important to get home and process some sleep. Before I could get away, the Foursome sucked me back in.
"What's an engaged lover boy like you doing out in the middle of the week?" Rocco said.
"Ah, no particular reason," I said.
"Sounds like trouble in paradise to me," Jerry Number One said.
"What's going on Duff, the wedding is off?" TC said.
"No, no, no…" I said.
"I never could see marriage," TC said. "I think the Mormons got it right."
"They're the ones who started that college, right?" Jerry Number Two said.
"Yeah, Oral Roberts," Rocco said.
"That ain't it," TC said.
"It is, too," Rocco said. "I think it has something to do with having more than one wife."
"What does that mean?" Jerry Number One said.
"You know, as long as you keep it Oral it's not cheating so you can have as many wives as you want. That's why he changed his name to Oral," Rocco said.
"It's Brigham Young," Jerry Number Two said.
"Yes, that was their motto. They encouraged it," Rocco said.
"Encouraged what?" TC said.
"Bring 'em young, bring 'em old-it doesn't matter. That's one horny religion. They wanted to make sure everyone knew to be, as they say, 'be like a fruit fly and multiply'," Rocco said. I decided to be like a fruit fly and fly right out of AJ's. It was a long day and it wasn't a good one, so it was time to cut my losses. My '76 El Dorado looked almost surreal under the amber streetlights across from AJ's, next to the cookie factory. The cookie factory's silos must've been making that red goo that goes in the center of those sugar cookies because it hung in the air like some sort of fructose, corn syrupy fog. The 8-track played It's Midnight, which it was heading for, and the king sang about knowing it was late and that's when he's weak. I think I understood just what he was talking about, because I just didn't feel right. My head hurt, I felt a little woozy, and something felt weird with Rene. She's entitled to a non-bubbly day and it seemed needy on my part to read a whole lot into it. Just the same, there are times your instincts tell you something is wrong and you just feel it. Of course, having a love-life track record comparable to the '63 Mets didn't help one's sense of security. Elvis was getting to the part about how things look brighter in the daylight when I saw a series of cop headlights up ahead, just outside Jefferson Park. Jefferson was Crawford's answer to New York's Central Park, and a poor answer indeed. It was by the area in the park with a stinky pond and a bunch of trees separating the bad part of the city from the less bad part of the city. At night it was the haven for teenage drinkers, the gay guys who rendezvoused with anonymous partners, and the everpresent drug dealers. Flashing lights outside the park were as common as they were on the Crawford city hall Christmas tree. My curiosity got the better of me and I pulled over to the curb to see what was going on. There was an ambulance, and the cops and the EMTs tried to subdue a guy who was getting out of control at the thought of getting strapped down to a gurney. In the small crowd of park regulars that had gathered, I spotted Froggy, a gay guy who's been on and off my caseload for years. We've done favors for each other over the years-not the kind that happen in the park-and even though he did very little of what I suggested to him therapeutically, he was a good man. I once helped stop some beating of the gay men in the park and Froggy never forgot.
"Yo, Froggy," I yelled.
He squinted through the flashing lights with a selfprotective sneer before recognizing me.
"Mr. Duffy, how you been?" Froggy said. Froggy's blueblack complexion shined in the lights and his Caribbean accent set him off from the average Crawford citizen.
"What the hell happened here?" I said.
"Some crazy-as-shit street guy took a beating and it has sent him off. I mean O-F-F."
"Anybody you know?"
"Not one of my types. He be shoutin' at no one, carrying on about people out to get him, the military stealing his brain and what not…"
I stepped away from Froggy without saying goodbye. I headed toward the commotion to get a closer look. Sure enough, the man they tried to subdue was Karl. He was bleeding from a couple of spots on the face and his clothes were torn and dirty. They had him on the gurney, but he still screamed something about the truth setting him free.
"You getting rude, Mr. Duffy," Froggy said. It jogged me back.
"Oh, sorry, Frog."
"You know this gentleman?"
"Yeah, a little bit," I said.
5
The blood gushed out of both eyes. It was thick and came out with the force of a fireman's hose. It hit me in the face and splashed in my own eyes, making it difficult to see. I felt a piercing in my side and then two of them were at my sides throwing punches at me. The whole time I couldn't do anything to defend myself even though my hands were free. The blood continued to splash on my face, the piercing kept entering my side, the two shapes whaled away at me, and I couldn't raise my guard. When my vision cleared I could see a teenage boy fifteen feet away crying for help. He's in pain, scared to death and he looks pathetic. He screams for me to help him and I can't move. Something awful is going to happen to him. Slow dribbles of blood start to run down the boy's face. When I look close I see the boy is me when I'm fifteen. The blood starts to run down his face harder, and the blood gushing from the eyes in front of me turns black. I look to my side; the sharpened steel point that is stabbing me in the side turns into a snake getting ready to bite. It's all happening at once and suddenly something wet and scratchy is dragged across my face…