By Hook or By Crook

by Gorman, Ed

  “Who wants the cow when you already have the milk,” said Marie, clearly unaware of how much milk she had given away in her young life.

  “I wasn’t that way.” Lenore realized her voice was trembling. “I did the best I could, under the circumstances.”

  “You were a shit mom. You chased away Dad, then you just sat back and let them take me to juvie, didn’t even spring for a decent lawyer when I got into trouble.”

  “I did the best — ”

  “You didn’t do shit.” Frankie banged his fists on the table. “You were a shitty mom and now you’re a stupid cunt, mooning over some young guy. It’s disgusting.”

  He stomped out of the kitchen, followed by Marie. Lenore began to clear the kitchen table, only to drop the dishes in the sink, her shoulders shaking with sobs that she didn’t really have to fake.

  “He didn’t mean that.” Aaron came over and started patting her shoulder awkwardly.

  “He did,” she said. “And he was right. I wasn’t a very good mother. I should have found him a stepfather when his own father left, or at least put him in some program. Like Big Brother, or whatever it’s called. I failed Frankie. I failed him over and over again.”

  “It will be okay,” Aaron said, but it was more a question than a statement.

  “How? He’s either going to get arrested or killed. If he gets arrested — well, that’ll be even worse for me, once he tells the police he was dealing here. They take your house for that, Aaron. Even if you can prove you didn’t know, or couldn’t stop it, they take your house.”

  “Frankie’s pretty careful — ”

  “You said there was some quarrel over his territory?”

  “Not so much now.” She turned then, and the hand that was patting her shoulder passed briefly over her breast, then dropped in embarrassment. “A little.”

  “He could be killed. Some guys who want his corner could just open fire one night, and the police wouldn’t even care. You know how they do. You know.”

  “Naw — ” He met her gaze. “I guess so. Maybe.”

  “Killed, and no one would care. No one.”

  Two nights later, Aaron woke her at 3:00 AM to tell her that Frankie had been shot on the corner, gunned down. He was dead.

  “Were you there?” she asked.

  “I had gone to the 7-Eleven to buy smokes,” he said, very convincingly. “When I started back, I saw all the cop cars, the lights, and decided not to get too close. Marie was shot, too.”

  “So she’s a witness.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. What should we do?”

  “What should we do?” She hugged him in a perfectly appropriate way, a maternal way. Her son was dead, his friend was dead. It made sense to hold him, to comfort one another. It also made sense when he kissed her, and when he reached under the peach gown that matched her silky robe. It made even more sense to crawl on top of him and stay there most of the night. Lenore had not been with a man for a long time, but that had only increased her stamina, and her longing. And, besides, she was very grateful to this young man, who had done what she needed him to do, and without her ever having to ask straight out.

  In the morning, after the police called to ask if they could swing by before she went to work — Frankie didn’t have current ID on him, so it had taken them awhile to sort out where he lived, if he had next-of-kin — she told Aaron that he should probably move on, go somewhere else, maybe back home to Colorado.

  “Marie is conscious,” she told him. “And saying she thinks it was a white guy who fired the shots at them.”

  She could see Aaron thinking about that.

  “She’s also saying it was a robbery, that she and Frankie were just walking home from a club. Still...”

  “I’ve got a friend in New Mexico,” he said.

  “That’s supposed to be nice.”

  “But not much saved up,” he said, a little sheepish. “Even with you giving me a free place to stay, I never did put much away.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, reaching deep into a cupboard, behind layers of pots and pans, one place Frankie and Marie would never have meddled. “I have some.”

  She gave him the amount she had stashed away without admitting why she was saving it, a thousand dollars in all.

  “I didn’t — ” he said.

  “I know.”

  “I even thought — ”

  “Me, too. But I want you to be safe.”

  “I could come back. If things cool down.”

  “But they probably won’t.”

  He looked confused, hurt even, but Lenore would knew he would get over that. Perhaps he felt used, but he would get over that, too.

  The police were on their way. She would have to get ready for that, be prepared to cry for the loss of her boy. She would think about Frankie as a child, the boy she had in fact lost all those years ago. She would think about the boy she was losing now. Somehow, she would manage to cry.

  And then, when the police were gone, leaving her to the business of burying her own boy — she would go down in the basement and begin the business of reclaiming her own house, washing sheets and throwing open the tiny windows in spite of the wintry chill. Her house was hers again, and no one would ever take it from her.

  • • •

  LAURA LIPPMAN has written fifteen novels, including ten in the award-winning Tess Monaghan series and a collection of short stories, Hardly Knew Her. Her latest book is I’d Know You Anywhere. She has won many prizes for her work, including the Edgar, Anthony, Agatha, Nero Wolfe, Quill, Macavity, and Barry awards. She lives in Baltimore.

  DIGBY, ATTORNEY AT LAW

  By Jim Fusilli

  After seven years of night study,Francis Michael Digby was graduated from the Rutgers School of Law, Newark, and some time thereafter, admitted to the New Jersey Bar. His modest ambition already spent, he hung his shingle outside a storefront below the cold-water flat in which he was born in 1927, some thirty-five years ago, and settled into the agreeable life of a small-town lawyer.

  With his family providing references, Digby became the attorney of choice among the Narrows Gate Irish who hadn’t escaped when the piers and factories began to shutter. Often, he was asked to represent both parties to a grievance. Thus it was with the Rooneys.

  “A cross I need not bear,” Mary Catherine Rooney summarized with a terse nod.

  “Seeing as I’m pushed beyond the brink of dignity...” Leaky Rooney explained when he turned up at day’s end, surprisingly sober and equally resolute.

  Though Leaky and Mary Catherine seemed opposites — he gray, wiry and devilish, she blonde, stout and considerate — they were of a like mind on the issue at hand: Divorce was the only solution. Both parties instructed Digby to draw up papers.

  Twice he nodded his compliance, pausing each time to wipe clean his wire bifocals. Eight years with Mary Catherine at St. Matty’s Elementary told him she wouldn’t budge while angry. Though drink could render him sentimental, Leaky, an émigré from Hell’s Kitchen across the Hudson, had a notorious and unpredictable temper. When Artie Meehan backed his Buick into Mary Catherine’s cart at the A&P, Rooney took a baby sledgehammer to his collarbone. His arm and shoulder in a cast that made it appear he’d sprouted a plaster wing, Meehan came to Digby demanding redress. A civil suit would prove worthless, the attorney advised. What would you gain but his lasting enmity? Subsequently, Meehan moved down the shore, precise address unknown.

  Now, their meeting at its end, Digby dropped his hands on his desk and hoisted out of his chair. “However regrettable, it is as you wish, Mr. Rooney,” he intoned, offering him a dark cloud of finality. Then, claiming a late meeting at City Hall, he headed to Franziska’s, intent on a steak sandwich dripping with buttery au jus and a mound of crisp onion rings.

  Over seconds on side orders of roasted mushrooms and red cabbage, Digby deliberated. In matters such as Rooney v. Rooney, neither party actually wanted to nullify the marriage — he couldn’t site precedent for div
orce among the Narrows Gate Irish — and so a visit to his office was provocation, escalation and, ipso facto, part of the dance toward forgiveness. Digby understood his role was to bring them together, compelling dialogue. Inevitably, if only by the play of chance, a kindness would ensue and a spark would rise from the ashes. Then Digby would withdraw, returning to his role as public defender in minor criminal matters, filing Worker’s Compensation claims against the mighty Jerusalem Steel and cozying deeper into the silky embrace of his undemanding life.

  As he took the Buchanan Avenue jitney down to the eight o’clock showing of Taras Bulba at the Avalon, Digby decided he’d talk first to Mary Catherine, hoping her indignation had wavered. She’d once been a hazel-eyed beauty, and he remembered how she’d cried in class the day Roosevelt died. He assumed that somewhere beneath her now-matronly bosom remained a kind heart. He was confident she’d see her Leaky was pitiable in the first degree.

  Digby bought a box of Good & Plenty at the concession stand, nestled under a heating duct in the balcony and, as the Coming Attractions began to blare, fell into a deep, satisfied sleep.

  • • •

  While Digby dozed, Leaky Rooney was invited to leave the Shamrock. Throwing back another shot of Four Roses, he’d fallen off his stool and, arms windmilling, landed squarely on O’Boyle’s dog, a fourteen-year-old named Rat Catcher.

  Her yelping echoing in his ears, Rooney drifted into the quiet alley behind the bar. As he ruffled sawdust out of his hair, the silence was broken, and he spun in dread, fearing he’d just heard his late mother’s cackle. Often, she’d told him he’d end up drunk and alone.

  Groping his way to a stoop in the shadows, he brushed aside a broken bottle with his shoe and sat, dropping his head in his hands.

  Then, as a glimpse of a desperate future took hold, he stood, hitching his drooping slacks. Mewling cats watched curiously as he wobbled over cobblestone, failing to avoid overstuffed garbage cans.

  He knew she wouldn’t take the safety chain off the first door so he came around back and started up the fire escape.

  “Mary Catherine!” he bellowed when he reached the second floor. His hands were covered in rust.

  Third floor and Rooney tried to pry open Emmy Ahern’s kitchen window.

  “Up one more, you idiot,” the widow Ahern instructed.

  Mary Catherine sighed in resignation. “Go get your father,” she told Kevin and Robert, age eleven and ten, respectively.

  “I thought you gave him the boot,” said Anna, the little one. “For good.”

  Twelve-year-old Katie toed the yellowed linoleum, peeling it from the floorboards. “I’ll wager you don’t remember what it’s about. The fight,” she said.

  Mary Catherine shrugged sadly while kneading a dishtowel. “No, I suppose I don’t.”

  “He forgot your Lucky Strikes,” recalled Anna, who, though only seven years old, was an experienced busybody. “Remembered his L&Ms, and a six pack of Piels, but he forgot your Lucky Strikes.”

  Robert opened the kitchen window to begin his descent.

  “Mary Catherine! It’s me. Your loving husband. Your breadwinner.”

  Since the layoff at National Can, he’d been trying his hand at roofing, with little success. Hence, his new nickname.

  “I forgive you!” he added. “As God is my witness, I forgive you!” Katie headed to the icebox. “I’ll reheat the stew, Ma,” she said. Hours later, as they lay in bed, the children down and drowsing, Leaky Rooney said, “And to think I wasted my good and precious time with Digby.”

  “Digby?” Mary Catherine turned toward him. “You saw Francis Michael Digby?”

  “Indeed,” he replied, hands folded on his stomach.

  “My Francis Michael Digby?”

  “The same.”

  She said, “I saw Digby.”

  Rooney wriggled to sit. “That louse. Playing us against each other.”

  Not so, she thought. He seemed quietly proper, as he was in grammar school. A good boy, a keen student, the nuns often said. Mary Catherine was proud her classmate had done well.

  “You know,” Rooney said, “he was pushing those damned papers hard at me, then rushing to City Hall, him thinking who he is — ”

  “I suppose he was doing what we asked.”

  “ — pulling the wool, pressing on. Like I don’t know the game.”

  “Means nothing now,” Mary Catherine tried.

  Rooney was building toward a full head of steam. “Attorneys. Cocks of the walk...”

  “Come on,” she said as she dropped a hand amid the tufts of prickly hair on his shoulder. “What’s the use of it?”

  Moonlight peeked through the blinds. “You know what he wants?” Rooney said, “He wants you.”

  “Oh my goodness.” She raised to her elbows. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Ah. I’m ridiculous, am I?”

  “I didn’t say — ”

  Though still dizzy from drink, he spun and bent over to search for his shoes.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Like you’d care.”

  “For heaven’s sake — ”

  “Don’t you be bringing the Almighty into this,” he snapped. “This is between me and you and your boyfriend Francis.”

  “My boyfriend?” Mary Catherine was out of bed now too. Mounds of freckled skin wiggled before settling under her nightgown. “Have you lost your mind?”

  He hurried to the corridor and reached down into the closet. Old paint cans and roller skates rattled.

  “You’ll wake the whole house.”

  “To the devil with the whole house.”

  She said, “Would you use the brain — ”

  There stood Leaky Rooney, his baby sledgehammer in his fist. “No one makes a fool of me,” he announced.

  “Except you,” Mary Catherine muttered as he began his bumble down four flights of stairs.

  • • •

  The following day, Rooney caught a day’s work helping to tar the roof at Narrows Gate High School, other men walking away when it started to rain. So he postponed his search for Digby, who in his mind had grown devil’s horns and a pig’s snout, and was all set to slip an arm around Mary Catherine’s waist, serenading her with oink-oinks, sweeping her off her feet with his silver-tongued attorney talk. Last night, Rooney sobered as he waited between the fins of cars parked nose in outside Digby’s office. Soon, midnight came, but Digby had not.

  Walking his beat, Malatesta the cop saw Rooney once, twice, and the third time told him to go home, his family was waiting.

  “That’ll be the day I need advice from the likes of you.”

  “How’s that, Rooney?” Malatesta said, cupping his ear.

  A man had to reclaim his wife. It was natural law, for which no degree was required.

  Malatesta smacked his open palm with his nightstick. “Home, Leaky,” he repeated.

  While Rooney melted and applied tar, his wife toiled diligently at the small, storefront Bell Telephone office on Sixth and Buchanan. The working life was still new to Mary Catherine, but she’d taken commercial courses in high school and knew how to do what she was told. Her boss was easygoing: though Mrs. Leibowitz wore a bun that brought her head to a point, she allowed the day shift to correspond to school hours. At three o’clock, the mothers were succeeded by single women who called themselves the Night Owls.

  Knowing this, Digby arranged to find himself walking the avenue as Mary Catherine headed home. What a coincidence, he’d say when they met, offering to share his umbrella. Then, lowering his voice, he’d add that he had the papers ready for her to sign. In the course of their stroll, he would refer calmly to the finality of her actions, how such a thing done couldn’t be easily undone. As the wiser of the two, she was likely to express some reservation. Then why not sleep on it? Digby would propose. Then, several hours later, he’d drop in the Shamrock and who should he see but Leaky. Mr. Rooney, what a coincidence, he’d say, and buy him a round, whispering dis
creetly that he had papers in his office. Should we go now? he’d asked, knowing Leaky wouldn’t leave the stool until he toppled off it. He’d propose —

  Digby was shaken from his reverie by a small voice from behind.

  “Hey, Digby.” The little girl wore a St. Matty’s uniform, its white blouse dislodged from a checkered skirt. Polish failed to hide the wear on her saddle shoes.

  “Hi there...”

  “Anna. Anna Rooney.”

  “Anna, yes.” Exhibit A as to why the Rooneys should remain united. A pinprick to tranquility’s balloon, the freckly kid needed guidance. “How are you?”

  “Me, I’m always good.”

  He looked at her. She was more Leaky than Mary Catherine, the glint of wicked mischief in the eyes, blunt chin high in defiance.

  “Digby. My dad is looking for you.”

  “OK. I’ll be in my office — ” here Digby looked at his wristwatch “ — in about an hour.”

  “No Digby, you don’t want to do that,” Anna told him. “My dad’s not too happy with you.”

  “Now why would you say something like that? Your father — ”

  “You went to St. Matty’s with my mother, right?”

  “Yes, but — ”

  “Was she pretty?”

  “I suppose,” Digby replied. “Well, yes. Yes, she was. But why — ”

  “My father’s going to take his hammer to your head, Digby.” She was tapping her foot at the edge of a puddle, causing ripples in the murky water.

  “Anna — ”

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  • • •

  Digby hurried home, aware a law degree was no match for a lunatic with his sledgehammer. He locked the door, and went to the refrigerator to retrieve a cold drink, his throat parched from his rapid retreat up Rogers Point. But all he found was a jar of mayonnaise and a soggy carton of chow fun. Tap water sufficed.

  Apparently, in the splish-splash of his alcohol-addled mind, Leaky Rooney had concluded Digby was engineering their divorce so he could step in on Mary Catherine. If Rooney had caved in Meehan’s shoulder for bumping her shopping cart ...