“We don’t like you messing around with our family,” said the one in front of me.
“Ah,” I said. “What family is that?”
“The O’Sullivans, as you damn well know.”
I remembered with zest the time in Dublin when three thugs from the North Side set upon me and I had thrown them through a plate-glass window. This ought to be easy by comparison.
“Aren’t you a little old and a little out of shape for this nonsense?”
I might be accused of egging them on.
The one behind me grabbed my arms and attempted to pin them.
The other aimed a punch at my face.
I fell forward to duck the punch. He missed and landed a good solid blow on his brother’s jaw, knocking him to the ground.
“Pat, you fucking asshole, you hit me.”
He grabbed at my feet. I kicked him away. The other one lunged at me. I grabbed him and threw him to the ground.
Some have argued that I enjoy violence. That doesn’t fit the image of Dermot, the handsome and lazy lug. Moreover, it’s not true. However, I do enjoy acting vigorously in my own self-defense.
Dazed, the two of them struggled to their feet and charged me.
I pushed them away with ease.
“Look guys, I’m Hawk. If you keep this silliness up, I’m going to have to hurt you.”
“Freeze!” said a female voice. “Police officer!”
It was Anna Maria, the pretty little Latina sergeant, whom Mike the Cop often assigned to protect me. She was holding a very large gun in both hands.
Sean O’Sullivan made a very bad mistake. He swung his arm recklessly in her direction and knocked the gun out of her hands. It fired and one of the windows of my house shattered.
Now, I confess, I was very angry. I knocked him to the ground, fended off his brother, picked Sean up, and knocked him down again. Then I kicked the brother in his private parts and sent him to the ground too.
Then I heard the thunder of feet on our steps and a wild yell from Celtic antiquity—two very angry wolfhounds, accompanied by my wife with her weapon of choice, a canogi stick (cross between a hockey stick and a club). The dogs pounced on the two fallen men and affixed their jaws to the throats of the brothers O’Sullivan. On a single word from my wife, they would have torn out both their throats. We had a police officer as a witness.
“Everyone all right up there?”
“You shite hawks make a single move, the dogs will kill you. They’re both police dogs”
Cindasue appeared on the run, in jean shorts and a tank top. She was carrying a service revolver that was almost as big as she was.
“Secret Service. If you polecats move, I’ll kill you both.”
Anna Maria had recovered her gun.
“I arrest you two on charges of assault and battery, resisting arrest, and causing a gun to be discharged.”
I had been saved by two tiny women cops.
“I didn’t realize you were a cop, Cindasue.”
“Get this dog off me,” Pat said, his voice in pure terror.
“We’ll report you, for this,” Sean said, trying to push Fiona off him.
“I’d advise you shite hawks not to move.” Nuala closed in with her canogi stick. “These dogs are very nervous.”
Both men began to sob.
“Don’t kill us!”
“Our father will see that you are all punished!”
In the distance I heard the sound of squad cars.
The cavalry was coming.
“I think it’s safe to call off the dogs, Nuala Anne.”
“Girls,” she said thickly, “let go.”
Reluctantly the dogs pulled back and sat on their haunches, ready to go into action again at a minute’s notice. I walked over to them and petted them both.
“Good girl, Maeve. Good girl, Fiona.”
They relaxed, but not much. They sat on their haunches a few feet away from the O’Sullivans, breathing heavily. Anna Maria snapped cuffs on both men and read them their Miranda rights.
“You can’t do this to us. We’re important people.”
I glanced up the steps. The next generation was about to get involved.
“Go back, kids. Everything is fine. Commander Murphy is here with her cannon and Sergeant Cruz with her nine millimeter, and your mother with her canogi stick. You heard me, Nelliecoyne, back into the house.”
The kids ascended to the top of the steps, Nelliecoyne shepherding the other two. They paused at the top of the steps to watch. It was, after all, a good show.
Five squad cars pulled up.
“Cruz,” said the first cop out of the car, “what the fuck is going on?”
“Keep a civil tongue in your head, Reynolds. There are civilians present. And what is going on is that I have arrested these perpetrators for assault and battery, resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer, and causing a gun to be discharged.”
“No shit … sorry, ladies.”
I held Maeve’s collar. She didn’t know police like her mother did.
Fiona for her part laid her paws on the cop’s shoulder and kissed him.
“What the hell … hey good girl, good girl.”
“She’s a retired Irish police dog,” I explained. “She loves cops.”
A spit-and-polish African-American emerged from a car.
“I’m Lieutenant Craig Scot. Can anyone tell me what’s going on … ma’am, I hope you’re not going to hit anyone with that thing.”
“It’s not a thing. It’s a canogi stick.”
“I see … hey, dog, I’m one of the good guys, oh you want to be friendly, well, nice dog, nice dog.”
“She’s a retired Irish police dog, Lieutenant. She loves cops.”
“Might I ask, sir, who you are?”
“I’m Dermot Michael Coyne, Officer. I live at this address. The young woman with the canogi stick is Nuala Anne, my wife. You know Sergeant Cruz, I presume. The other woman with the howitzer is our neighbor, Lieutenant Commander Cindasue McCloud of the Yewnited States Coast Guard and the Secret Service.”
“Howdy, Loot, I don’t mind if you say ‘no shit.’”
“These two clowns are Sean and Patrick O’Sullivan. Their father doesn’t like me much so he sent them to thrash me. Sergeant Cruz is a witness. The police dog who is trying to make friends with every cop in the detail is called Fiona and this one is her little daughter Maeve. I guess that covers it.”
“I’ll say it now, ma’am. No shit! Howard, put these two goons in the car and take them into Area Six.”
“You can’t arrest us.”
“We already have. You want another resisting arrest charge?”
A detective car pulled up. Commander John Culhane of Area Six emerged.
“I heard the address, Nuala Anne, and I figured I’d better come over.”
Fiona went mad. John Culhane was her favorite cop in all the world. Cindasue dashed back to their house down the stteet. Katiesue was standing in front of the house, trailing her “blankie” and crying for her mother.
Later in our parlor over splasheens of Irish whiskey we told the whole story to Commander Culhane. Ethne, who had just arrived, herded the children off to the playroom.
“Da fight bad guys,” Socra Marie observed. “Ma come with club. Katiesue ma come with BIG gun.”
“They sound like real loonies,” John said in disbelief.
“I want to establish, John, that I was doing just fine by myself until these five females, three human and two canine, thought they had to intervene on my behalf.”
“Shite hawks,” my wife said, still tense and angry. “You could have got hurt. Someone up here could have got hurt.”
“I think we should warn you, John, that they come from an unusual family. Their father firmly believes that there is not a playing field in the world that he can’t tilt.”
He grinned.
“Not the Chicago Police Department when they’ve assaulted a cop.”
“Th
ey’re spoiled babies,” Nuala Anne snapped. “throw the book at them, John.”
“And watch the playing field.”
After John left, the kids entered the parlor, along with the dogs.
That’s a big mob.
Socra Marie was continuing her running commentary on the event.
“Bad men try to hit Da. Doggies stop them. Good doggies.”
Fiona and Maeve strutted around like soccer players who have just won a match. On a pitch.
Nuala Anne embraced the two of them.
“Aren’t you two wonderful? Didn’t you save me husband for me? Oh … good dogs …”
“Good doggies,” Socra Marie agreed. “Save Da.”
Actually both of the thugs were flat on the ground before the arrival of the cavalry and me wife with her canogi stick. And Cindasue with her cannon. I had the good sense, however, not to question the revisionism.
I relaxed on my big easy chair—Nuala and the doggies already owned the couch. My adrenaline rush tapered off, my heart stopped pounding, I relaxed and every muscle in my body ached.
How come? No one laid a hand on me!
YOU FRIGGIN’ EEJIT. IT WAS A BIG FIGHT.
The kids left with Ethne. The hounds remained ensconced on the couch. My wife and I continued to cool off. I noticed the shattered window. I’d have to call someone to fix it. Sometime. Someday.
Ethne’s curly hair appeared at the door of the parlor.
“Isn’t your man coming over to work on the garden? Sure won’t you have to tell him about his gobshite brothers?”
We both groaned.
“I knew I was in no danger when I heard you and the dogs thundering down the stairs.”
“Give over, Dermot Michael Coyne! We were the reserves! You’d already finished them gobshites and themselves pushovers anyway.”
“’Tis true.”
“Now come over here and hold me in your arms while I cry.”
That’s always a compelling invitation. In her red halter and white shorts it was irresistible. The doggies made way for me, sensing I had prior rights.
My wife’s heart was still pounding, her muscles tense. I found the smooth flesh of her belly and caressed it gently. She sighed.
“Don’t you know all the tricks, Dermot Michael?”
“Only a few.”
She moved my hands up to her breasts and squeezed them.
“Sure, aren’t you thinking you won’t have to make love to me tonight?”
“I suppose I can manage it, though you do wear me out.”
“We could do a preview now.”
My fingers found their way under the halter to the warm, moist skin of her breasts.
“Och, Dermot Michael, wouldn’t that be brilliant? But there’s people in the house and dogs and kids and we have to talk to Damian and isn’t Danuta making supper?”
WE’RE RUNNING A FRIGGIN’ HOTEL!
I’ll still get her before supper. We have to celebrate the triumph of life over death once again.
A bell rang in the distance.
“Damian … Go sit in the chair, Dermot Michael Coyne, like a decent husband and not a hungry ravisher.”
She rearranged her halter. The dogs didn’t move.
Ethne came in with Damian.
“What’s wrong?”
Ethne told him.
“Didn’t your two gobshite brothers try to beat up on poor Dermot this afternoon and herself and the hounds going after them!”
That was a nice, terse summary. Except I was not exactly poor.
The dogs, faced with the alternative of embracing Damian or cuddling with my wife, chose the latter. She was, after all, the alpha person in our pack.
“Dermot,” Damian said, his face twisted in anguish, “I’m so sorry. They’re a pair of jerks. Dad must have shamed them into it. How badly are they hurt?”
NO DOUBT IN HIS MIND WHO WON.
We told him, Nuala incoherently because she was sexually aroused.
’TIS A GOOD THING FOR A MAN TO HAVE AN AROUSED WIFE AND BEFORE SUPPER AT THAT.
I must not make her wait too long.
YOU ALWAYS HAVE JUST ONE THING ON YOUR MIND.
Wouldn’t you if you had a wife like her?
IDIOT! I DO.
’Tis true.
“My family is imploding,” Damian sad sadly. “Maura’s loss, my exhibition—it’s all too much for them. Wait till they find out I’m getting a new trial. I feel sorry for them. None of this was supposed to happen.”
“They’re not likely to find out about the trial until it’s over.”
“That’ll be worse,” he said ruefully. “Someday I’ll have to try to figure out what it all means. Maybe Dad is losing it as we get older. What could he have hoped to accomplish by turning those two spoiled babies loose on you?”
“Good question,” Ethne agreed.
“Well, I better get to work in the garden. Let me know how it works out in court tomorrow, though I’m sure Mom will be on the phone weeping about it and blaming me … Coming, guys?”
The hounds bounded up from the couch and followed him out the door.
“Now that he’s earning money on his own, we shouldn’t make him work on the garden,” I said as I took my wife by the hand and led her upstairs.
“He loves it and besides it gives him an excuse to see Ethne.”
“You approve?”
“Och, you remember what it was like, Dermot love—the boys and girls together.”
“I have no recollection of that phase of my life.”
I locked the door of my office—a kidproof lock I always said—stripped her, exulted in her beauty, kissed her, spread her on the couch, and made very sweet and gentle love to her.
“Dermot”—she sighed afterwards—“I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you.”
“You’d be the brave Irishwoman that you are.”
“Don’t think this excuses you,” she announced as I helped her on with her halter, “from fulfilling your marital obligation in bed tonight. I have me rights.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Which I did.
Before then, at supper, Socra Marie continued her account of the great fight on Southport Avenue, a battle which was now approaching Cooley’s Cattle Raid in its epic dimensions.
“Bad guys shoot gun. Break window. Ma and doggies go downstairs. Doggies bite bad guys. Katiesue ma come with BIG gun …” the service revolver was now as big as her outstretched arms. “Me holler at bad guys. Cops come and take away bad guys.”
Out of breath, she sighed.
“Big fun.”
Poor Damian laughed with the rest of us.
YOU DON’T REALLY THINK YOU CAN FUCK HER AGAIN.
Why not? You saw what she looks like when she’s naked, didn’t you?
THAT SEEMS KIND OF BRUTAL.
She wants it.
DON’T HURT HER, YOU EEJIT.
I never have.
AND STOP THE POUNDING IN YOUR HEAD!
Can’t
18
CINDY AND I were in the back corner of the courtroom, trying not to be too obvious. A matronly black woman was the judge. On one side were two state’s attorneys, a young man and a very young woman. On the other side were the Irish cream twins, shaggy and battered, in prison clothes. They looked like they felt that they had been violated, outraged. Next to them were their father, his face, knotted in an ugly grimace, and a beautiful young woman with a glorious body and a halo of black curly hair. I could report to my wife that she was both gorgeous and sexy if now exhausted and fragile.
I WOULD HAVE VOTED TO PROMOTE HER.
Yeah, sure you would.
My wife’s last words to me before we left, I for the courthouse, she for Madame’s final lesson had been, “I love you more every day we’re together, Dermot Michael Coyne. I love you so much it breaks my heart. You deserve a better wife than me. But I have you and I’m not letting you go.”
“I think I heard that mes
sage last night,” I replied. “I don’t think I’m trying to get away.”
“All right, Mr. State’s Attorney, what do you have for me today?”
Both young lawyers bounced to their feet.
“The State versus Sean O’Sullivan and Patrick O’Sullivan.”
“Yeah? Irish huh? The charges?”
“Disorderly …”
“That you, guys? Stand up!”
John Patrick O’Sullivan stood up.
“Your Honor, there’s been a terrible misunderstanding.”
Maura tried to sit him down. Her sexiness I guess was natural, not learned. She was probably unaware of it.
“Yeah? Who you?”
“I’m the father of these …”
“You their lawyer?”
“No, but …”
“Sit down and shut up. Now, Mr. State’s Attorney, the charges if you don’t mind.”
“Disorderly conduct, assault and battery, assault with intent to do serious bodily harm, resisting arrest, assault on a police officer, causing a dangerous weapon to be discharged into a bouse—all felonies, Your Honor.”
“I know a felony when I see one, young man. You two guys were a real crime wave, weren’t you? … How do you plead?”
“May it please the court?”
The lawyer wore a gorgeous white, tailored suit, a white shirt with a dark blue tie and matching handkerchief in his jacket pocket. His long white hair was perfectly groomed. His accent sounded not so much southern but Illinois rural.
“My name is Simon Weber. I have the honor to represent these young men who have suffered a truly harrowing experience. My clients, Your Honor, have been through a horrible experience and are at present too confused to enter a plea. In their name I plead not guilty on all counts.”
“Hollywood send him over?” I asked.
“Simon is one of the best criminal defense lawyers in town. He knows that this case will end in a plea of some sort and it’s his job to intimidate these young people into as good a plea as possible.”
“Will it work?”
“Over my dead body. I’ll have a word with Simon later. Let him know that this won’t be a walk.”
“Bail, Ms. State’s Attorney.”
“Your Honor, these are two dangerous men.” Her voice was soft and singsong. “You’ll note that they assaulted the victim without reason and caused a shot to be fired into the victim’s house. It was only by luck or the grace of God, as you prefer, that his wife or one of his three children was not hit. We ask that the bail be set at a hundred thousand dollars for each of them.”
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