The advantage of surprise was over. The other two kids jumped me, one riding my back, the other going for my stomach with hard little fists. All I could see was a maddened teenage tornado circling me with blows. My arm felt light as I thrust my gun deep into the kid’s stomach. He doubled, groaning.
It was like chugging beer at a cop racket. Every hit, every satisfying whack of blackjack against flesh made me hungry for the next. I whirled and socked. The kids kept coming, and I kept knocking them down like bowling pins.
The adrenaline rush was stupendous, filling me with elation. I was a real cop again. There was life after detox.
At last they stopped. Panting, I stood among the fallen, exhausted. My hair had escaped from my knit hat and hung in matted tangles over a face red-hot as a griddle.
I pulled out my cuffs and chained the kids together, wrist to wrist, wishing I had enough sets to do each individually. Together, even cuffed, they could overpower me. Especially since they were beginning to realize I was alone.
I felt weak, spent. As though I’d just made love.
I sat down on the platform, panting, my gun pointed at Nylon Stocking. “You have the right to remain silent,” I began.
As I finished the last Miranda warning on the last kid, I heard the cavalry coming over the hill. Manny Delgado, with four reinforcements.
As the new officers took the collars, I motioned Manny aside, taking him to where the drunk lay sprawled in the corner, still shaking and whimpering.
“Do you smell anything?” I asked.
Manny wrinkled his nose. I looked down at the drunk.
A trickle of water seeped from underneath him; his crotch was soaked.
Uncle Paul, weaving his way home, singing off-key, stopping to take a piss under the lamppost Nothing unusual in that, except that this time Julie Ann Mackinnon, my eighth-grade rival, watched from across the street. My cheeks burned as I recalled how she’d told the other kids what she’d seen, her hand cupped over her giggling mouth.
“Not that,” I said, my tone sharp, my face reddening. “The kerosene. These kids are the torch killers. They were going to roast this guy. That’s why I had to take them on alone.”
Delgado’s face registered the skepticism I’d seen lurking in his eyes all night. Could he trust me? He’d been suitably impressed at my chain gang of prisoners, but now I was talking about solving the crime that had every cop in the city on overtime.
“Look, just go back to Brooklyn Bridge and radio-” I was going to say Captain Lomax, when I thought better. “No, call Sal Minucci in Anti-Crime. He’ll want to have the guy’s coat analyzed. And make sure somebody takes good care of that bottle.” I pointed to the now-empty whiskey bottle the light-skinned boy had poured kerosene from.
“Isn’t that his?” Manny indicated the drunk.
“No, his is a short dog,” I said, then turned away as I realized the term was not widely known in nondrunk circles.
Just go, kid, I prayed. Get the hell out of here before-
He turned, following the backup officers with their chain gang. “And send for Emergency Medical for this guy,” I added. “I’ll stay here till they come.”
I looked down at the drunk. His eyes were blue, a watery, no-color blue with all the life washed out of them. Uncle Paul’s eyes.
Uncle Paul, blurry-faced and maudlin, too blitzed to care that I’d come home from school with a medal for the best English composition, I’d put my masterpiece by his chair, so he could read it after dinner. He spilled whiskey on it; the blue-black ink ran like tears and blotted out my carefully chosen words.
Uncle Paul, old, sick, and dying, just like this one. Living by that time more on the street than at home, though there were people who would take him in. His eyes more red than blue, his big frame wasted. I felt a sob rising, like death squeezing my lungs, I heaved, grabbing for air. My face was wet with tears I didn’t recall shedding.
/ hate you, Uncle Paul. I’ll never be like you. Never.
I walked over to the drunk, still sprawled on the platform. I was a sleepwalker; my arm lifted itself. I jabbed the butt of my gun into old, thin ribs, feeling it bump against bone. It would be a baseball-size bruise. First a raw red-purple, then blue-violet, finally a sickly yellow-gray.
I lifted my foot, just high enough to land with a thud near the kidneys. The old drunk grunted, his mouth falling open. A drizzle of saliva fell to the ground. He put shaking hands to his face and squeezed his eyes shut. I lifted my foot again. I wanted to kick and kick and kick.
Uncle Paul, a frozen lump of meat found by some transit cop on the aboveground platform at 161st Street The Yankee Stadium stop, where he took me when the Yanks played home games. We’d eat at the Yankee Tavern, me wolfing down a corned beef on rye and a cream soda, Uncle Paul putting away draft beer after draft beer.
Before he died, Uncle Paul had taken all the coins out of his pocket, stacking them in neat little piles beside him. Quarters, dimes, nickels, pennies. An inventory of his worldly goods.
I took a deep, shuddering breath, looked down at the sad old man I’d brutalized. A hot rush of shame washed over me. I knelt down, gently moving the frail, blue-white hands away from the near-transparent face. The fear I saw in the liquid blue eyes sent a piercing ray of self-hatred through me.
If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s a woman drunk. Me too, Manny, I can’t stand women drunks either.
The old man’s lips trembled; tears filled his eyes and rolled down his thin cheeks. He shook his head from side to side, as though trying to wake himself from a bad dream.
“Why?” he asked, his voice a raven’s croak,
“Because I loved you so much,” The words weren’t in my head anymore, they were slipping out into the silent, empty world of the ghost station, As though Uncle Paul weren’t buried in Calvary Cemetery, but could hear me with the ears of this old man who looked too damn much like him, “Because I wanted to be just like you. And I am.” My voice broke. “I’m just like you, Uncle Paul I’m a drunk.” I put my head on my knee and sobbed like a child- All the shame of my drinking days welled up in my chest. The stupid things I’d said and done, the times I’d had to be taken home and put to bed, the times I’d thrown up in the street outside the bar. If there’s one thing I can’t stand…
“Oh, God, I wish I were dead.”
The bony hand on mine felt like a talon. I started, then looked into the old man’s watery eyes. I sat in the ghost station and saw in this stranger the ghost that had been my dying uncle.
“Why should you wish a thing like that?” the old man asked. His voice was clear, no booze-blurred slurring, no groping for words burned out of the brain by alcohol. “You’re a young girl. You’ve got your whole life ahead a you.”
My whole life, To be continued…
One day at a time. One night at a time.
When I got back to the District, changed out of my work clothes, showered, would there be a meeting waiting for me? Damn right; in the city that never sleeps, AA never sleeps either.
I reached over to the old man. My fingers brushed his silver stubble.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Paul,” I said, “I’m sorry.”
WHERE ARE YOU, MONICA? by Maria Antonia Oliver
Born in Manacor, Majorca, Spam, MARIA ANTONIA OLIVER also maintains a home in Barcelona. A leading Catalan writer, she has written more than six novels and is also a noted translator of American and English classics into her native language. Her mystery novel A Study in Lilac was very well received in Europe and North America.