They Don't Play Stickball in Milwaukee

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “I don’t know, but nobody mentioned no disc.”

  “Did anybody mention the dead DEA agent?” MacClough wondered, innocent as a lamb.

  “Fuck no!”

  “Well, Dallenbach,” I prodded, “here’s your chance. I understand the mob just loves being involved with the murder of federal agents.”

  Working on the axiom that less is sometimes more, Dallenbach said nothing in his own defense. “Come on, Lippo, can we get this over with? We can deal with these peripheral issues later.”

  “Sure, Dean, we can do that for you. Hey Gino, gimme back my coat.” Lippo took great care with his precious coat. “You know what happens sometimes when like McDonalds or somebody gives out a franchise to a guy who like cooks the books or don’t follow company rules and shit like that?”

  “I’m not sure I get your point, Lippo,” Dallenbach said impatiently.

  “Humor me, okay? So do you know what happens or what?”

  “I imagine,” Dallenbach answered, “that they reclaim their franchise.”

  “Right! Exactly fuckin’ right. They take back their franchise. And right now, that’s what we’re gonna do, Dallenbach. Take back our franchise, you total fuck-up.”

  “I don’t un—” Dallenbach began.

  “You understand, asshole. You understand.”

  We all stepped away from Dallenbach.

  “Why don’t I do all of them right here?” Gino spoke up for the first time. I liked it better when he didn’t talk.

  “Nah,” Lippo said, pointing at Dallenbach, “just him.”

  “But what about the disc?” Dallenbach cried in desperation.

  “What about it?” Lippo was cool. “If there really is no disc, then we got nothin’ to worry about. If there is a disc, who gives a fuck? I betcha me and Gino’s names ain’t on it. Am I right or what, Gino?”

  Gino laughed at that.

  Dallenbach blurted out: “But Malzone and DiMinici, your bosses will go down.”

  “Yeah, and so what? They ain’t gonna blame me for it.

  You was the one who never told them about it. And after tonight, there ain’t gonna be anybody to say I knew about it. Besides, me and Gino are overdue for a promotion.” Lippo nodded to Gino.

  Gino’s hand came up holding an Uzi with a thick silencer extended from the barrel.

  “But—” Dallenbach threw his hands up.

  “Look at it this way,” Lippo consoled him, “we’re doin’ you a favor. If Malzone and DiMinici had ever found out about the disc, they wouldn’t make this so quick and painless. This way you go out beggin’ to live. With them, you’d go out beggin’ to die. So cross yourself and shut your eyes.”

  Dallenbach actually took his advice.

  Before Gino could do Dallenbach his favor, MacClough went down in a heap. He was in terrible pain. He was doubled over on the floor, his left leg twitching. His bottom lip was bleeding from where he was biting through it. This wasn’t a feint to buy time and Lippo knew it. I tried holding John, but the pain would not let me comfort him.

  Gino and Lippo studied MacClough and searched each other’s eyes.

  “Okay,” Lippo said, “do ‘em all here. We’ll play some games with the guns or we’ll just throw a match on the pile. The cops in this town’ll be sorting it out till next Halloween.”

  MacClough winked at me. Gino had let him get too close. He kicked the gunman’s legs out from under him and the back of Gino’s head cracked hard on the concrete floor. I hit Lippo with a cross body block. My shoulder burned down through my toes, but, I thought, getting blood on Lippo’s coat was almost worth it. It’s funny what you think about. I stopped thinking about it when Lippo pounded the 9 mm butt into the square of my back. That wasn’t a good sign. But suddenly, another body piled on. It was Zak. I couldn’t see what was going on exactly, but I could feel Zak struggling with Lippo’s gun hand. I wondered if MacClough and Dallenbach were sharing a cup of tea while we were scrumming about on the ground.

  There was a shot. That got everyone’s attention. I didn’t figure it was John holding the gun. He was good, but his hands had been cuffed for quite some time and I doubted they had enough feeling left in them to handle a blind grab and behind-the-back shooting.

  “Get away from him,” Dallenbach ordered.

  Zak and I knew who he meant. We moved away. Lippo looked almost ridiculous seated there on his ass in his dirty coat. The fact that he was still holding the Glock made him seem a bit less silly. It was Mexican standoff time between Dallenbach and Lippo. Lippo didn’t wait to discuss it and squeezed off a few shots. Dallenbach crumbled. The door flew open and an endless stream of state policemen flew in behind Detective Fazio. Lippo wasn’t an eloquent speaker, but he could compute the odds. He immediately tossed the Glock at Dallenbach’s body and started screaming something about self-defense. Gino moaned, opened his eyes, and went back to concussionville.

  Fazio, his crooked nose shiny with sweat, just stood there shaking his head at us. He was out of breath and thought smoking a Kent was the best way to catch it. He looked at MacClough’s cuffed hands and John caught his gaze.

  “That one’s got the key,” MacClough nodded at Dallenbach.

  Fazio dutifully went about collecting the keys and undoing the cuffs. MacClough spent the next five minutes rubbing his wrists. Gloved hands were pushing and prodding my shoulder and the back of Zak’s head. The general consensus was that we’d live.

  “Did you get all that?” MacClough asked, pulling a small microphone off his inner thigh.

  “Every word,” Fazio said. “Every fucking word.” He turned to me. “Sorry about the girl.”

  I had nothing in me to say to him just then, but he smiled at what he must have seen in my eyes.

  “What the fuck took you so long?” MacClough griped.

  “These tunnels, I’m not an ant for chrissakes! I can get you from the IND to the BMT to the IRT, but anywheres north of Syracuse I’m no good underground.”

  “How the—” I started the question.

  “We’ll talk about it some other time,” Fazio winked.

  A vaguely military looking gentleman in aviator sunglasses, a blond brush cut, and cheek bones higher than K2 introduced himself to me as DEA Field Supervisor Robert Rees. I shook his hand.

  “Good work,” he said. “Good work.”

  Whatever that meant. Too many people on both sides of the issue had died to make something good of it. I asked him if I might be allowed to leave now. He muttered something about my shoulder and a hospital. I told him the hospital could wait. He told one of the state troopers to take me wherever I wanted to go. He shook my hand again. Maybe he was as much in shock as the rest of us.

  I asked MacClough how he was feeling. He sort of laughed at me and said that he’d live. I guessed he would. Life is a hard thing to take away from some people.

  Zak put his hand out for me to pull him up. I pulled him up. There were tears in his eyes and when he began to beg forgiveness, I said he had nothing to beg for. Forgiveness wasn’t my province. He had to forgive himself. My anger had all vanished in a pool of other peoples’ blood. I kissed him, told him I loved him, and ordered him to go visit his grandfather’s grave.

  “No one’ll ever call me the family fuck-up again,” he vowed.

  “Yeah, Zak, I know. And they don’t play stickball in Milwaukee.”

  It fit somehow.

  When I was almost through the door, MacClough called out for me: “Where you goin’?”

  “There’s a man at the Old Watermill Inn who I need to talk to.” I didn’t look back.

  Poltergeists

  Once again, the swimming pools and split ranches were rushing by beneath the belly of my plane.

  Although it was only several weeks ago that I had flown home for my father’s funeral, Hollywood felt like ancient history to me now. That’s the trick of time, isn’t it? It’s not how much passes by, but how much happens as it passes.

  As the flight attendant float
ed on by my row, I thought of Kira. She resembled her in only the most superficial ways—the almond eyes, the luminescent black hair. She smiled at me, checked the back of my seat to make certain of its upright position, and continued down the cabin. It was little moments like these that hurt the most, the unexpected flashes of her and the thoughts of what could have been. Sometimes it is a curse to have an active imagination.

  It was also moments like these that made me wish I could believe in the God of my parents. I thought it must be a great comfort to have the faith that everything happened for some greater reason, that deaths, no matter how cruel or untimely, had a purpose we just could not understand.

  I neither believed nor understood. I was alone.

  Japan had been good for me. Kira’s parents treated me like family and introduced me to everyone as Kira’s fiancé. There was no anger in any of the family, no ugliness about the violence in America. No one felt inclined to blame me. It seemed everyone had the ability to make sense of things but me. Kira’s mother, fierce and stoic, took me for a walk one day to a Shinto shrine. As we sat in a rock garden under the cold sunlight, she spoke to me about her only child. She never once looked at me, talking instead to the few birds that landed on the rocks to sun their plumes.

  “My girl was never happy,” she said. “To my shame, she had no footing. At first, we tried to make her too traditional. It is not an unnatural reaction, I think, to being in a foreign land. Our feet, my husband’s and my own, were on wet rocks themselves. America can be overwhelming to people who are raised on sacrifice.”

  “You have nothing to explain to me. I should be the one,” I confessed, “to explain.”

  “Thank you for your graciousness. These are hard things to say, but a mother has the right to say them. She was an unhappy girl; no friends, no family, moving all the time. My husband’s career was consuming. So, when Kira decided to stay behind, I was . . .” She began to cry. “I was almost—”

  “—relieved,” I finished for her.

  “Her unhappiness and our guilt was easier to deal with a continent away. In my awkward grief, what I am trying to say is that you must be a special man to have made Kira want to love you. It seemed she never wanted to love her parents.”

  “Mine was the easier role. You had already made her perfect.”

  With that, I stood and walked back to the house alone. I left Kira’s mother by herself to sort things out amongst the rocks and birds. At one point, I turned back to look at her. She was my age, maybe a year or two older, but was, I thought, wiser than I would ever be and far more courageous.

  At the airport, Kira’s father gave me a family photo album, a handshake, and a bow. We knew we would never see one another again.

  As always, MacClough was waiting for me outside customs. He was still heavy, but frail-looking somehow. His skin was jaundiced as it had been in Riversborough. He was worn out and looked like shit. I probably looked worse, having spent the better part of a day in the air. Although considerable creature comforts were available on board, no one would ever mistake twenty hours in a 747 for a weekend at a Palms Springs spa.

  We embraced. His handshake was firm as ever. There was relief in that. We exchanged some small talk on the way through the parking lot. I continued walking even after MacClough had stopped.

  “This is it,” John said, pointing to a rented car.

  “Where’s the T-Bird?”

  “I decided to finally get it fully restored. It’s at a place out in Montauk that specializes in ’60s Fords. It’ll be done in a coupl’a weeks. Already paid for.”

  I thought that was an odd thing for him to tell me, but I just loaded my bags and myself inside. Near the airport, it was difficult to judge the season. It always seemed cold at the airport and the air always smelled of hot metal and spent kerosene. But with my window down slightly as we hit the Cross Island, I could smell spring coming. I could read it in the orange face of the setting sun. My eyes set more quickly than the sun.

  We were off the LIE and the sky was dark when I woke up. I peeked over at MacClough, but he caught me.

  “Up for the home stretch, huh?” He rubbed the back of my neck.

  “I guess.” I was so articulate when I awoke from sleep.

  “Listen, I’m goin’ away for a little while. Will you keep an eye on the Scupper for me?”

  “Where you—”

  “I don’t know where I’m goin’,” he said, “but I’m burnt. It’s time to take a rest away from here.”

  “How long?”

  “For chrissakes, Klein! Will you watch the Scupper for me or what?”

  “You know I will,” I threw my hands up in surrender. “What the fuck else do I have to do? Besides, it’s a better gig than my agent could get me.”

  MacClough thought that was very funny. He didn’t restart the conversation until we were nearly at the Sound Hill village limits.

  “I didn’t kill him, Dylan,” was how he began.

  “Hernandez?”

  “Yeah, Hernandez. You were right about the rolled-up newspaper. I did rough him up pretty good, but he just wouldn’t tell me where the Boatswain kid was.”

  “So you used your second gun, pulled out all but one cartridge, and stuck it in his mouth.”

  “Just like I learned in school,” he admitted. “Even though he thought it was a random spin of the cylinder, I knew the bullet was in the last chamber. That gave me five shots to play with.”

  “He talked.”

  “But he didn’t give the kid up easy.” MacClough let go of the wheel and held up his right hand, fingers spread wide. “It took all five empties before he gave me the location.”

  “So before I could tell him he was under arrest and that he had the right to remain silent, he . . .” MacClough put his right index finger in his mouth and pulled a make-believe trigger. “He clamped his thumbs around my trigger finger and swallowed the bullet.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that, as God is my witness. Boom! He gave up the kid and offed himself. For more than twenty years, I wondered about that.”

  “You don’t wonder anymore?” I asked.

  “No, not anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  He deflected my question. “You are one nosy Jewish son of a bitch. It doesn’t matter why I don’t wonder anymore. I just don’t. I didn’t want to go away before I told you about Hernandez.”

  “What about my brother?”

  “Later for your brother.” He parked in front of the Scupper. “I’ve got to check on something. C’mon in and let me buy ya a beer.”

  I thought about resisting, but I knew he’d drag me in by my ears if I put up too much of a stink. When MacClough wants to buy you a beer, you let him. It looked dark and pretty dead inside, sort of like I’d felt since Kira’s murder. Yet, just the sight of the place, no matter how bereft of patrons, brightened my spirits. It lifted me up like the smell of a Nathans hot dog. Walking through the front door, I noticed the bar really was dark and empty. I shrugged my shoulders. For all I knew this could be one of MacClough’s lame promotions: Hide and go seek night! All lite beers half price if you can find them in the dark.

  “Surprise!” someone shouted.

  The lights came up as did about twenty heads from behind the bar. My brothers and sisters-in-law were there. Zak and the other kids, too. Guppy came out of the kitchen with Valencia Jones on his arm. Detective Fazio and Sergeant Hurley, looking fine in black jeans, boots, and work shirt, were seated at a booth. Sure I noticed Hurley. I was grieving, not dead myself. All of Sound Hill’s usual suspects were on hand as well. Even Larry Feld had deigned to come and I was never happier to see the prick. But I was most shocked at the presence of my agent, Shelley Stickman.

  “Dylan, Dylan, Dylan.” He ran up to me smiling like he had a stale croissant stuck in his lips. “I got news.”

  “You got news, Shelley?” I was so enthusiastic I nearly fell back asleep.

  “Sure I got news. Wha
t da ya think, this is a welcome back from the funeral party?”

  “You’re an asshole, Shelley.”

  “Sure I’m an asshole,” he said straight-faced. “It’s a pre-requisite in my line of work.”

  “Get to the point, Shelley.”

  “Moviemax bought the rights. They’re not crazy about the title, but for what they paid, they’re allowed not to like the title. Sure,” he winked, “the thing will probably never get made, but who cares?”

  “You’re right, Shelley,” I said, shaking his hand unconsciously, “who cares?”

  “Sure, bust my balls, but I got a heart. It’s just not good for me to show the bastards I’ve got to deal with for you. I’m sorry about the girl.”

  “Thanks, Shelley.”

  “Ten percent is my thanks, but you’re welcome anyway.”

  God, he was such a putz. Polonius was his role model. Maybe later we could get him to stand behind a curtain and the rest of us could play Hamlet. Doesn’t everyone want to play Hamlet once in their career?

  Valencia Jones walked up to me with tears in her eyes. Her mouth moved as if she wanted words to come out. None did. That was all right. She didn’t have to say a word for me to understand. We hugged and I told her to give up skiing. She liked that. I sat down with Hurley and Fazio. Hurley excused herself and asked me if she could bring me a drink on the way back. I explained that MacClough would know what I wanted. She drifted into the crowd. As she did, I thanked Fazio for saving our lives.

  “Glad to do it.” He smiled. “Almost like being a real cop.”

  “You know, MacClough didn’t kill Hernandez,” I said awkwardly.

  “I know. He told me all about it.”

  “Why’d you help him? MacClough and my brother ruined your career.”

  “They didn’t ruin it, they changed it. And I helped him, because he needed help. I don’t hold what your brother might have done against you or your nephew. I’m an honorable man. Anyways, he helped me solve Caliparri’s murder.”

  Confused, I wondered: “You’re not bitter?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “What are you saying?”

  He put his face close to mine. “Listen, MacClough came to me and asked for help. It wasn’t complicated. I was just supposed to keep tabs on him when he went back to Riversborough. He figured he needed somebody to watch his flank. Thinking ahead, we arranged a meeting spot in case he got jammed up. If he needed it, I’d wire him for sound. IAD cops are good with wires. I hedged my bets and let the DEA in on our little arrangements. MacClough ran. We met. I wired him. We got the evidence. You got your nephew. All MacClough did for me was answer some questions, questions that have eaten my guts out for more than twenty years. Whether I liked the answers I got didn’t really matter. It was that I got them. That’s all. The past doesn’t change. The hurt don’t go away.” He grabbed his belly. “The bitterness is still in me, but maybe I can sleep a little bit now.”