Front Page Palooka: A Nick Moretti Mystery

by Venutolo Anthony

  She noticed the music and started to bob her head. We were dime grinding a few minutes later when the phone rang.

  I was expecting The General but instead, it was Castro’s people. They, too, wanted to talk to me.

  Before I left the shack, I couldn’t help but notice the storm clouds roll in. I wiped the sweat off my brow and took one last swig of the rum. By now, it tasted like that Kentucky nectar.

  “Will you be back for dinner?” she asked.

  I assured her that I would be and kissed her on her head. “Here’s hoping that Castro’s not such a bad guy . . .”

  Earth Angel

  My conscience was beginning to hold me hostage and, in a weird way, the ransom was my future.

  Despite what we were taught by Father Flynn, some people were expendable. They just didn’t matter. I was a crook born and raised in a cold, Catholic orphanage and quickly learned that even I didn’t matter. She was no different. I could tell she didn’t exactly have a high opinion of her own footing in life. That’s what attracted me. Well, that and those blonde locks.

  It was easy for people like us to fall off the map. Bus depots, train stations, truck stops, ports of call — they were all breeding grounds for skirts with lonely hearts and creeps with one eye on their drink and the other on the door.

  I met her at one of these destinations and, to be honest, it really didn’t matter which one. I sold her a bill of goods and she bought them willingly. All I had to do was wink my wink and promise a little cabbage when our grift was done.

  A suitcase of diamonds. That’s what the road to kismet thought she was worth. And it worked. Greed tapped me on the shoulder that day and I figured one less future whatever-she-was-gonna-be didn’t matter in the grand scheme of the universe. She already had one strike against her looking down the barrel of my gun.

  But I remember that even in death, she looked like an angel — even with the Lucky Strike hanging from those puffy rosebud lips. Three hours later, she slept in the Earth.

  Again, some people are expendable. At least that’s what I told myself as I patted the dirt with my shovel. The problem with that logic, though? Eventually, if we live long enough, guys like me develop a stab of sympathy. Our damned wisdom gives us a wretched frame of reference. And then it all becomes clear.

  I have to chuckle because the man upstairs cursed me. No, he didn’t get me pinched. I have all my limbs and I can see through both my eyes. I felt snakebitten by Ol’ Totem because I met the woman who would be my wife not one day after I put that sweet young thing down.

  I’ve lived a lie my whole life and now when I look at the face of my teenage daughter I hope that my earth angel doesn’t take it out on her.

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