by Thomas Laird
Chapter 25
Mary O’Connor, 1980
Barry brings a sack lunch for the two of us, and we go to one of those neighborhood mini-parks to eat. He’s brought a couple of Cokes in the bag, and I see he’s made two gigantic subs for us.
We have only the half hour, so it’s a rush to gobble all the good things he’s fixed. He even included a couple of small bags of potato chips. He says he’s tired of McDonald’s, and I tell him that lunches like this could become a habit for me.
His face blushes, just slightly. There’s a swab of red on his cheekbones. I tease him about it, and he asks me how everything’s going. I’m assuming he means at home, with me and Casey.
“I don’t want to get into it,” I answer.
“I’m sorry. I know it’s none—“
“That’s not it. Look, things haven’t been so good, for a while. I don’t know what’s gonna happen.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“You want to adopt me?” I laugh.
“I’d do anything you needed for me to do.”
“I don’t want to be your little sister, Barry.”
“I don’t think I’d want that, either.”
“You don’t just want to be friends, anymore?”
“You know I want more than that. But I’m not going to interfere with your life, Mary.”
“I wish someone would.”
“Is it that bad, really?”
I feel the tears welling in my eyes.
He scoots over on this park bench toward me. There are a few kids on the swing set a few yards away from our picnic table. Then he puts an arm over my left shoulder and he draws me toward him and I lean in close to him.
The tears come loose and they course down my face and he dabs at a few of them with a gentle fingertip. But we can’t linger because our thirty minute break is about up. We’ll need five minutes to walk back to the bakery. When we approach the sidewalk, I see the Mustang parked across the street. I see Casey sitting in the driver’s seat, with the windows up. It’s mid-November, and it’s brisk, in the low fifties.
“What’s wrong?” Barry asks when he sees me staring at the muscle ride across the street.
“Nothing. Let’s go. It’s getting late.”
*
I get the big frost when I get home, that night.
“Who’s your little friend?” he demands.
“Just a kid I work with.”
“He looks like he’s more than just a buddy.”
“We’re just friends, Casey. You don’t need to get jealous. There isn’t anything going on.”
“He looked real close to you, there, for a while, touching your face and all that shit.”
“There’s nothing to get all pissed about. Like I said, he just works with me, and I was feeling sorry for myself.”
“Sorry about what? Sorry that you’re with me?”
I sit down on the chair, opposite the couch he’s perched on, like some coiled snake.
“You been different, lately, and you know it.”
“How’ve I been different, Mary?”
“You got a short memory, then.”
“You mean that?”
“Yeah, Casey, I mean that.”
“I already told you I was sorry. I didn’t mean to make you bleed. I just got carried away.”
“You coulda stopped, when you heard me yell out.”
He stands up.
“You don’t like it, you can get the hell out. Nobody’s stopping you, Mary. There’s the fucking door.”
“You want me out?”
“If you’re feelin’ all repressed or some shit like that. I don’t want to be holding you back.”
“I told you I love you. Doesn’t that mean anything?”
“I told you I wasn’t going to get deep into shit like that. I told you nothing lasts for always. That’s TV bullshit. People come and go. When a better offer comes along, they leave.”
“I don’t want to get out. I want you to be the way you were, back when all this began.”
“It doesn’t seem like you’re happy with what you got. Maybe the street is beckoning to you, huh, girl?”
“I don’t want to go back there, Casey. This is the only home I’ve had since I left that drunk asshole mother of mine. I don’t want to lose what we got, and not just the roof over my head, either.”
“I said I was sorry. I won’t do that kind of thing again. I already told you.”
“I know. Okay. Can we get back to the way things were before all this shit?”
“You sure you want to hang on with me here?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Then you ain’t eating lunch with junior no more.”
“Okay, if it bothers you that much, I won’t.”
“It bothers me that much, yeah.”
“All right.”
“Come over here, Mary.”
I get up out of the chair and I go to him. He slides out of his blue jeans and his briefs, and he’s already in the air.
I get down on my knees and give him what he wants. He takes hold of my head and urges me hard onto him. He’s pulling my hair because he’s so into it that all he thinks about is where he’s going and what he wants me to do.
I stop and try to take my clothes off, but he grabs the back of my head and pulls my face down again. He thrusts at me and yanks my head back and forth until he finishes, and before I can get off my knees, he stands up, hoists up his pants and walks toward the john. Then I hear the shower running, inside.
*
The next day at work, snow flurries are coming down as I walk the last couple blocks to the bakery. When I get inside, Barry greets me before all the other old ladies do. I smile at them all, but I don’t talk to any of them, especially Barry.
“What’s going on?” he asks as I put my apron on, behind the counter.
“Look, Barry. I can’t have lunch with you, anymore. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
There’s no one in the store except the help, so there’s nothing to draw me away from him, and deep inside I don’t want to shut him out.
He comes closer to me, behind the glass cases.
“Did he say something to you?”
I don’t answer.
“Did he, like, threaten you?”
“You don’t want to get into this, Barry. You really don’t.”
“I’m not scared of him.”
“Then you ought to be.”
“Are you frightened of him, Mary?”
Then a half dozen customers walk into the store and all the counter workers are engaged, including me. The old lady with the silver hair has given me a long list of stuff to bag for her and it takes a while to ring her out, at the register. By the time I’m done with the old woman, I’ve got a middle aged female in front of me whose tone of voice I’m not fond of. She barks out orders to me that make Barry look over at me away from the old man he’s serving at the moment.
Finally the big rush subsides, and Barry comes back my way.
“I’m not afraid of him, really,” he says.
“I appreciate it, but you gotta stay away. We can talk and stuff in here, but no more outside the building. You don’t know how he gets.”
We’re talking at a low whisper so the rest of the counter girls can’t share in our lives.
“You know you liked going out with me at lunch. Why can’t he let you—“
“If you don’t stop, Barry, I’m gonna have to find a new job.”
That stops him. He kinda studies my face, and then he just walks away, down the counter.
*
He doesn’t use me and lose me when I get home that night, but he doesn’t talk to me at all. I ask him what’s wrong two or three times, but he won’t say a word, and he goes out and doesn’t say where he’s going.
I fix dinner, but he doesn’t come back, and his plate sits and becomes cold, and then I wrap it in the plastic stuff and put it in the fridge.
I
watch television, and I get bored with what’s on, and then I try reading my romance novel, and then it’s eleven and I go to bed waiting for him, but he still doesn’t come home, and about midnight I fall asleep.
In the morning no one’s next to me in the bed, and so I get up and shower and eat breakfast and get dressed and head off to work. I’m wondering if he’s hurt or something, and I think about calling the hospitals around here, but I don’t have time.
When I get to work, Barry’s not there. I ask the other girls if he called in sick, but no one says anything.
The day goes by real slow, but five eventually rolls around. I hear a couple of the older ladies bending toward each other, whispering.
“What’s going on?” I ask them, as I approach.
Glenda, the blonde grandma of six looks at me, kinda oddly.
“The boss just told us, out back, that Barry’s in the hospital, over at St. Matthew’s.”
*
I take the bus to St. Matthew’s. It’s only about a mile and a half from work. When I get there I ask the girl at Admittance if Barry Gold has been admitted here. She says yes, and I ask for his room number. She asks me if I’m family, and I say I’m his sister. She tells me it’s Room 525, and I take the elevator up to the fifth floor. The Admittance nurse didn’t know his condition.
When I get to his floor, I ask the nurse there if I can see him. Again she asks if I’m family, and I tell her the same lie I told the one downstairs.
“He’s hurting pretty badly, so keep it very short,” the young brunette tells me.
When I walk in, my hand comes to my mouth. His face is all bandaged up, and his right arm is hoisted up in a sling. He’s awake, though, but his eyes look all bleary.
The bandages cover the top of his head, and there are bandages on his chin, too. But his face is uncovered between the top and the bottom.
He sees me come in.
His eyes seem to brighten just a little bit.
“What happened to you?”
I reach down and take his hand, and he winces in pain.
“I’m sorry, Barry. I didn’t mean to—“
He reaches out to me and takes my hand again with his uninjured left hand.
“I don’t know who it was. I never saw him; he came from behind me as I passed an alley. It all happened so fast.”
He’s barely able to whisper.
“Where’s your mother and father?” I ask.
“You just missed them both,” he says quietly. He winces again.
“They’ll be back in a little while…I’m gonna be okay, Mary. They said it was a slight concussion, and then I broke my arm with the fall. I guess he knocked me out. One punch fight. Except that he must’ve booted me a few times while I was down. Some people saw me lying there and they called an ambulance, but like I said, it happened so fast no one could tell much about the guy who did this. He just sorta disappeared. I’m sorry. But it hurts to talk.”
“Then please don’t say anything else. I just wanta sit here with you.”
“You can meet my parents,” he smiles wearily.
Then he closes his eyes.
“When you get all better, you can start taking me to lunch again.”
But he didn’t hear all that. I can hear his soft, regular breathing, and I get the hell out before his mom and dad get back.
*
He’s home when I get there. I’m sure he thinks I’ll want to know where he was all last night and this morning, when he did all that to Barry, but I’m not going to ask him anything. I’m done talking, I’m done doing anything with him. I’m also not stupid enough to bring up what happened with Barry to him, either. I’m not going to set him off. Things will run smooth and quiet until he takes off for work tomorrow morning, and the minute he leaves I’m packing up and leaving him for good. The street, any place, is better than being with him. I’m going to see about getting a room at the Y or anywhere cheap, something I can afford. If I have to, I’ll get a second job to keep afloat. But I gotta get away from him before anyone else gets hurt.
Now it’s Barry, and thank Jesus Christ that it wasn’t worse, but he did all that in daylight, and he’s lucky no one fingered him for the deed. He must have done all that damage like lightning. I wouldn’t put it past him to throw Barry a sucker punch from behind and then put the boots to him while he was out cold. Casey McCaslin’s a coward. There’s no other way to put it. He’s just the kind of bastard Parisi said he was.
I drop the dime on him, the moment he left in the morning to cut meat. I would’ve grabbed hold of that straight razor of his, but it was gone. And I searched the apartment from top to bottom, but I didn’t find any of those body bags, either. They could be in one of the other two apartments that are vacant, but I don’t have the keys, and he always carries them on his own key ring.
Detective Parisi tells me he’ll come pick me up after work. I tell him okay, and then I get back to bagging bread and doughnuts and coffee cake. The day goes by quick because the customers just keep pouring in.
Outside, it’s flurrying again, and I wonder where I’ll be by Christmas.
*
He comes with his partner, Sergeant Gibron, and they drive me to the YWCA on the outskirts of New Town. Parisi gives them two months’ rent in advance for me, even though I try to argue him out of it.
“You need some help in another two months, you call me,” he says.
“I’ll take the next two months, and then we’ll see how you’re doing,” Gibron throws in.
The tears just naturally gather in my eyes, and Parisi laughs and tells me to cut it out.
“We’re taking you to our favorite restaurant,” the Detective tells me.
We wind up at the White Castle at 79th and Loomis.
“Sorry. I wish we could’ve done better, but we got another call to make in less than an hour. So. You couldn’t find the razor.”
I look at him and then at the bigger man.
I shake my head no.
“And I looked everywhere in that apartment and I couldn’t find a body bag, either.”
Parisi nods sympathetically.
“The good news is that you’re out of there,” he says. “Now we’ll take care of him.”
“Do you have anything new about those six girls?” I ask.
“Not really. But something’ll turn up. It always does,” Gibron smiles, sad-like.
“This man calls you or shows up around you, I want you to call me right away. Do whatever you have to, but don’t get in a car with him, ever again. We’ll keep an eye on you because I don’t think he’ll like it that you left. You won’t always see us, but we’ll be around. Don’t hesitate for a second. You see him, you let us know.”
“You think he’d really hurt me bad?” I ask.
“He’s hurt you bad enough already, no?” Parisi asks me.
Chapter 26
Casey McCaslin, 1980
I look for her everywhere, and the only place I can lay eyes on her is in front of that goddam bakery, and I’ll be damned if there isn’t a copper cruising by the bakery right at the precise moment I’m passing by. If it isn’t Parisi and that goddam Gibron, it’s a uniform or two. They know I’m not likely to take it easy on Mary after she took off on me.
So I can’t follow her home when she gets off. I’m still at work at 5:00, and I can’t afford to lose the money. I can’t do any jobs because I don’t know where the fuck my crew is hiding, now that they think I’m going to play Ten Little Indians with their dumb asses. Everybody else in the neighborhood has heard the word that I’m a suspect for the six kids and for the demise of that bag bitch and the night watchman, so I’m a persona non grata. No one I used to know wants to have anything to do with me.
I’m not looking for sympathy. I lived my whole life independent. After I popped the old bitch in the mouth, I’ve been my own man, so not having a soft shoulder to cry on doesn’t bother me at all.
But this Mary got to me a little, especially in the beginn
ing. She doesn’t know anything about the crew and my old business because I never talked to her about that kind of shit. Just when I thought I might like to back off from doing what I was doing, she starts asking me things that she doesn’t need to know. And then she runs into that punk at her work and she starts getting ideas that I knew she would. She’s looking for someone her own age, someone who’s more like her in every way. So I have to break this Barry Gold’s fucking arm. He was lucky it wasn’t his neck. The kid had no idea who I was or who he was fucking with, so I guess he didn’t deserve to get wasted, but I still don’t like the idea of the two of them doing whatever, behind my back. I just wish I could’ve caught them together, and then it would’ve been an entirely different scene.
Parisi is behind all this. He kept talking to her and talking to her, telling her to get out, get away from me. I know it was him. He’s trying to get under my skin so that I’ll make just one stupid move, like maybe taking a whack at another sweet little bitch while he and Gibron have me on Candid Camera. He’s a persistent son of a bitch. He had the rep of being a bulldog back in high school. I heard all about him from the slicks in the neighborhood. He went to that Catholic high school, and I went to the public because I didn’t have parents who were going to pay tuition.
Parisi was an All Catholic League shortstop in baseball and an All Catholic League guard for the lights, the guys shorter than five-nine, team in basketball. He was never big enough to make the jump to college or the pros, but I read about him in the papers. If it sounds like I’m jealous, you’d be wrong. I never had any desire to be in with the big shots in high school or anywhere else. A shrink would say it’s all about my mommy issues, and fuck the shrink. Everyone’s got his own thorns-in-the-side. Some guys make it in the world, and some guys get excluded from it.
I’m going to keep trying to find out where she’s hiding out. Again, I know the cop’s got something to do with her new location, but they’ll have to stop babysitting her, eventually. Man hours, and all that shit. I can out-wait him. We’ll see who the bulldog is, soon enough.
Losing the crew might have been a blessing in a disguise, since the cops can’t find Andy Shea and the rest, as well. If they stay lost, Robbery and Parisi and Gibron won’t be able to cut any deals with them. Then I won’t have to top them one at a time, after all. And as I say, Mary O’Connor doesn’t know anything.
