Flood Abatement

by James Norton

  Nana tugged at Bernie’s arm. “He’s not very good either, but apparently he is lucky.”

  “What about Stan and Leon?”

  “Who are they?” Nana asked.

  “Your neighbors, the guys in the other car?”

  Nana started to walk after Rhonda. “I don’t know them. So I can’t judge, but they didn’t look like innocent bystanders to me.”

  “Isn’t it a bad idea to blow up the car in front of your daughter’s house?” he yelled.

  “That’s not her house.” Nana stopped.

  “What?”

  “She just lives there while the owners are in the Virgin Islands.”

  Bernie shook his head then limped to catch up to the women. They walked in silence until they crossed the street.

  Rhonda said, “Took you long enough to get to Omaha.”

  “You didn’t exactly give me the ‘yellow brick road’ to follow,” he replied.

  “We couldn’t be too obvious,” Nana said.

  “And,” he continued. “They didn’t put a tail on me until Tuesday.”

  The trio reached the car, and Rhonda looked over the roof at him. “It took them another two days to get here.” She nodded at the smoke rising above the trees.

  “Who knew they’d be such klutzes at it.” He glanced back, then opened the passenger door. “Suppose Nick and the Columbians hadn’t shown?”

  Sirens blared on the next block then stopped at the house.

  “You worry too much, Bernie.” Rhonda smiled. “Don’t agonize over things that didn’t happen.”

  Chapter 117

  Three weeks later, shortly before two in the afternoon, Bernie sat in a small Italian restaurant across from John Pelegraso. The capo was dressed casually in an open collared sport shirt as he worked on a plate of linguini with white clam sauce. “You should have some of this. It’s very good.”

  “I believe you, but I went out with my mother for a big lunch.” Bernie thought the garlic smell was stronger than he liked.

  John nodded knowingly while he sipped a glass of red wine. “So Nana blew up the car with the Columbians in it? Those were bad guys. Everybody is much safer now.”

  “I didn’t really see the necessity.”

  John leaned forward on the table. “Okay, but its done.”

  Bernie breathed out a silent whistle. “I don’t have the nerve you do.”

  “You pull my brother out of a burning helicopter in the middle of a fire fight, and you say that?”

  Bernie sipped his glass of red as they sat at the dim table in the back of the restaurant. “I guess it depends on the moment.”

  “And the people.”

  Bernie nodded his head once. “Things okay with you and Rhonda?”

  “Like she said, ‘Money’s money’.”

  “Something more specific, John.”

  “Well, yes and no. The movie is being re-shot and she has money for another, but she’s having trouble with Nick.” A waiter came and gave John a scoop of spumoni. “This is great stuff.” He gestured to the waiter with his left hand. “Give him some.”

  “What’s the problem?” Bernie asked

  “Who’s?”

  “Rhonda’s.”

  “Nick wants to shoot some grand thing that he can sell in legit theaters. She wants to stick with the original distribution plan.”

  “What do you say?”

  “We’ll stick with Rhonda and the sure money.”

  The spumoni came and Bernie tried it. “Yeah, good stuff. The pistachio is excellent.” They ate in silence. “I’m sure they’ll work it out.”

  John leaned back in the spindle back chair. “You should go see her.”

  “Did she say that?”

  “No, but she’d like it.”

  “I’ll think it over.”

  John pointed at the airline tickets in Bernie’s coat pocket. “You goin’ somewhere?”

  “Got some business in Miami. While I’m there I thought I’d run down to the Keys, lay in the sun, fish, kick back get away from all this bullshit. Maybe hop over and see the Bahamas.”

  John smiled.

  “What?”

  “They’re shooting in Miami.”

  “Okay … hmm. So I should look her up?”

  “Go and see her.”

  “You can be a pain in the ass.”

  John lowered his eyes and smiled.

  “All right, all right I’ll go to see Rhonda.”

  “Make sure you do.”

  “Wow. Okay.” Bernie gave John a sour look then ate some ice cream. “Are you still interested in rare coins?”

  “Maybe.”

  Bernie took a glassine envelope out of his shirt pocket and put it on the table.

  John picked it up and looked at the torn corner. “A little the worse for wear.” He poured the gold coin on the table then pushed it around with a fork until it faced him. “Double Eagle, 1931.”

  Bernie ate another spoonful of the spumoni. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Not like the one Rhonda had.”

  “Well, if you are still interested in that sort of thing, I can get you one that’s a couple of years older.”

  THE END

  BONUS Chapters

  Summer Jobs

  A NEW Dan Hagerty Novel

  Chapter 1

  May 24, 1974

  Dark blue necktie in hand, I raced up the cast iron stairs to catch the El at Fullerton, half a block east of Sheffield and De Paul University. Late, I went up two steps at a time dodging the empty beer cans and a broken wine bottle. Thirty or so people stood on the worn wood waiting for the next train to take us into the Loop. The crowd was a combination of middle-aged blacks, younger white urban pioneers with a few college kids thrown in. They were about two-thirds men and a third women. Maybe two-thirds straight and a third “alternative lifestyle.”

  A few of them were reading newspapers whose headlines screamed about Nixon and Watergate. The constant drip of scandal was eroding his position. One headline read “GONE WITH THE SUMMER?”

  Standing in the back, I stared north, looking for the train as I caught my breath. After eighteen months of rehab my chest felt fine and only a small prick of pain lingered in my left leg. I ran my hand over my face and was disappointed not to find my mustache. That and the collar-length hair were concessions to the summer job. A trickle of sweat ran down from my right armpit to be soaked up by my white short sleeve shirt. Well, so much for the Right Guard.

  It was supposed to be in the high 70‘s today. With the humidity already in that neighborhood, rain was expected. In my section of the platform, the atmosphere was dominated by the smell of stale cigarettes, a touch of rotting fruit and just the hint of urine. Then I saw the light, the headlight of the approaching train.

  A few people folded their papers as we felt the first rumble of the wheels. Everyone looked left and began to edge forward to the yellow safety stripe. The scream of metal on metal made half the group wince. The three-car train blew into the station. We shuffled forward. All the seats were filled. I grabbed a chromed pole as the doors slid closed and braced myself for the start.

  It was my second week on the job as an intern with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois. Even as a war vet, strings had to be pulled to get me this job between my first and second year of law school. I was pleased that friends in influential places thought highly enough of me to make the effort. Too bad the job was a piece of crap - scut work, fetching and carrying for anyone and everyone in the States Attorney’s office.

  At the next stop a girl in her early twenties, a few years younger than me, boarded the train. An older back man got up and attempted to give her his seat. She was a bit aghast as she politely refused his offer - the collision of women’s lib and old cultural programming. Or, maybe, he wanted to look down the neck of her yellow summer dress. She was showing a lot of skin. Summers in Chicago were preferable to winters, especially when it came to girl watching. />
  After the train, it was a brisk walk to the Dirksen Federal Building while tying my tie. Across the plaza I saw Grace O’Gorman get into a cab, not all of her, just that distinctive blonde head I’d held in my arms as she bled. I’d seen her name on some papers I’d delivered to the Clerk of Courts and hoped I’d be able to find her among the vast array of Federal employees in the city. She didn’t show up on any of the phone lists I’d seen, but it was a thrill to know Grace was in town.

  Chapter 2

  I could smell the paper burning. Thousand and thousands of tons of paper burning in the Federal warehouse just west of the Loop. Row after row of it was stacked fifteen feet high. The acrid smell of it hit me in the face when I rolled the fire door aside.

  It wasn’t on fire, but it was burning. The chemicals used to make the paper were slowly oxidizing it. In a century it would all be so much grey ash. It was just the nature of modern paper. You put enough of it in a close space and the smell was undeniable.

  Warehouses were my least favorite places. They made me itchy. I scrambled around on the shelving for most of that late May morning before I found the box someone insisted was vital to the rule of law in these United States. My quarry was not in the location mentioned in the records. A number had been transposed. For my efforts I got bathed in dust along with decaying bird and rodent droppings.

  Sweat had soaked through my shirt by the time I dropped my prize on the desk of the secretary to a rank of lawyers who toiled as Assistant US Attorneys. She’d been in the office for twenty-two years.

  Blue eyes behind tortoise shell glasses squinted at me. “Mr. Kolwakowski needed those document two hours ago. He is very put out.”

  “The box wasn’t where I was told. He’s lucky to get it at all.”

  She pointed at one of the open doors behind her. “Well, take it in there.” As I returned and walked past her she gave me a parting shot. “Mr. Hagerty, If you intend to last the summer, you had better fix your attitude.”

  That was not going to be a problem. Near death experiences relieve you of that burden. Mine were never far below the surface. I smirked at her as I passed on in my search for the men’s room to clean my glasses and wash some of the crud from my hands and face.

  Solomon Johnson beckoned me into his cubicle as I returned to my designated area in the records room of the Dirksen Federal Building. A lean man with short, strawberry blond hair going gray, he had not spent much time in the sun during his forty odd years as a Federal employee, the last seventeen of which had been as records clerk. “Come in and close the door, Mr. Hagerty,”

  I did, then brushed some warehouse residue from my black pant leg. “What can I do for you, Mr. Johnson?” In a real life I would have called him Sol or Solly, but here in the records office, I’d have to work another twenty years before he’d respond to that sort of address from me. Of course, one of us would be dead before that happened.

  “Miss Pulaski called about you. She was not happy.” He frowned. “You need to go up there and apologize to her.”

  I smiled. “I don’t care. This is my last day.”

  “What?”

  “I’m quitting as of four this afternoon.”

  He blinked three times. “Is the work beneath you?”

  “No, I see that it is necessary work. Someone has to do this job. It just isn’t going to be me.”

  “Do you think someone with your connections should have a better job? That you should be paid more?”

  “Solly, may I call you Solly, connections and pay have nothing to do with it.” I could always get money and this summer I was living free in Chicago with my great uncle Dominic. Actually, more of a second or third cousin, but the family referred to him as Uncle Dominic. I continued my monologue. “I’m just not going to spend my time doing dull, undemanding work for people who don’t appreciate it. I’m sure someone else will be much better at it than I am.” I opened his door and went back to my battered, single-pedestal desk.

  As I got off the elevator in the lobby for what I thought was my last time in this Federal building, a woman about my age approached me. She was attractive in a simple way - short blonde hair, Peter Pan collared pink blouse, black skirt, no makeup. “Mr. Hagerty, please accompany me.”

  I stared at her. “Who are you and why would I do that?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She flicked me a smile. “And, it will be to your benefit.”

  I considered her. “Close enough. Lead on.”

  The actual office that the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois occupied was large and paneled in dark wood. It might have been the office of a senior partner of a white glove operation except it was crowded with filing cabinets covered with stacks of papers and folios. There was just the hint of cigar smoke oozing from the worn leather furniture.

  The man himself, in his ice cream suit, sat behind his desk talking on the phone. He gestured for me to take a seat while he listened to whomever was on the other end of the line. Placing the receiver in its cradle, he looked at me. “So, you are the famous Dan Hagerty.”

  “Well, I’m a Dan Hagerty. I personally have never met another.”

  “Not happy with our little intern program, are you?”

  “Well, ah, let me just say that what I have been doing for the past two weeks is not an appropriate use of my time.”

  “Really, why’s that?”

  “Time’s all you have. I almost ran out of it. I won’t spend mine doing something I don’t think is worthwhile.”

  He stood and walked over to the windows that looked out on other office buildings in the Loop. “Grace said you would have that sort of attitude.”

  “Grace?”

  “Major Grace O’Connor, you remember her?”

  I remembered holding a pressure bandage over a gunshot wound to her chest in a dark Seattle alley. “Difficult to forget.” I also remembered wanting to sleep with her. She was only seven years older than me, at most, maybe.

  “Agreed.”

  “Do you know how I can get in touch with her?”

  He twitched a grin and gave me his business card. “Something may turn up more to your liking.”

  Well, how many options did I have? “Sure, no problem.”

  Chapter 3

  When I arrived at Dominic’s place and told him about quitting, he said, “I will get you ‘nother job for summer.” When he told me it was driving limousines, I said, “I don’t have a chauffeur's license.” He smiled, “You can use mine.” That arrangement turned out to be not that unusual. Monday morning I started work officially as Dominic Sovic, but my name tag read “Dan.”

  There are outright menial jobs and then there are menial jobs that got you outside meeting people. So, here I was three weeks into summer wearing a chauffeur’s suit behind the wheel of a stretch Lincoln Continental waiting for the sun to come up over Lake Michigan.

  Why this particular bride and groom weren’t up in their hotel suite bonking each others brains out was beyond me. She had just graduated from Loyola and he from Notre Dame. They were so shiny new and, well, Catholic. They wanted to watch the sunrise on the first day of the rest of their lives together. Six years ago, was I that naive, optimistic, whatever? Probably just my own sleep deprivation. I shifted as the wound in my leg pinched. Well, it was double time for me, the limo driver, with the potential for a big tip.

  I sat slumped back in the driver’s seat with my chauffeur's cap tipped down over my eyes. They stood in the car’s open sun roof. The breeze off the lake was slight and clean, lacking the stench of rotting algae which would show up in the next sixty days or so.

  “Wo Hoo,” she whooped as he popped the champagne cork while the sun pushed over the eastern horizon.

  “Hey, Dan,” he yelled. “Come toast to our new life.”

  I’d been up nearly twenty hours and did not want to drink lukewarm wine, or be there on Lake Shore Drive. “I really can’t drink while I’m working, Mr. Gallagher.”

  “Aw,
come on, Danny, one little sip,” begged the bride.

  It was the polite thing to do. Even dead tired I could be polite. And, no sense blowing a big tip. I took my glasses out of my shirt pocket and put them back on.

  The sun blazed on the water as I hauled my frame out of the car and walked around to the passenger’s side. “I’m happy to toast, but I can’t drink.”

  The willowy red head frowned at me.

  “It could cost me my license and this fantastic job.”

  Mister handed me a cheap glass flute of the bubbly. “Fair enough.” He set the green bottle on the roof of the black car, placed his hand on the bride’s cheek and kissed her.

  Holding his gaze Misses touched his glass with hers. “To you, Tommy.”

  “To you,” Mister said.

  To the south, I saw that the sunrise turned the year old Sears Tower into a hundred and ten story orange flame. I should take a ride to the top of the world’s tallest building sometime this summer.

  They kissed again and turned to me with extended glasses. “To us.”

  I touched my glass to theirs. “To you, health and happiness.” What else was there? Not getting shot flashed in my mind.

  They drank. I handed him my glass when they’d finished.

  “Let’s head for the barn, Dan. There’s chores to be done,” Mister said.

  Thank god. I slid behind the wheel to complete my assignment as the chauffeur for the Shanahann-Gallagher bridal party. Forty-five minutes later I turned the Lincoln over to a crew of illegal Haitian immigrants who would clean it for the next gig. I clocked out and jumped on my great uncle Dominic’s motorcycle, a Norton Atlas, for the quick ride to his residential renovation project on the west side of Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, because that’s where I bunked.

  Chapter 4

  “Get up!”

  Someone or something lifted me from the bed by the back of my T-shirt.

  “What?” I muttered.