On the train

Stephan did something for Naval Intelligence, though what it was exactly none of us were ever sure. He came out of the Navy as an officer, in need of a job and looking after. Somebody, I think it was Paulie, got him a job on the railroad. So for a million years now he’s been a conductor, working late runs.

I saw him the other night, late coming out of Hoboken. He looked more like a ghost than he’s ever looked, which is saying something.

He took my ticket and didn’t acknowledge me. It wasn’t like the train was full of people or anything, but that’s Stephan.

Twenty minutes later he came back and sat down next to me.

“Train hit a deer last night,” he said, without any prelude. “Took the head right off. Still by the tracks. If you look carefully just after Mahwah, you’ll see it.”

“How you been, Stephan?” I asked.

“Mmmm,” he said, and got up.

I looked, but never saw the deer.

Train talk

Overheard yesterday . . .

Guy 1: Yeah, he musta been there three or four days. Down in the basement, where he lived.
Guy2: Basement apartment?
G1: Yeah. With the dog.
G2: And it ate him?
G1: Just the soft parts, eyes, you know. Of course, three or four days like that, the body blows up a bit. Dog musta taken a few bites and said whoa. Kept on chewin' though. Hungry . . . Want another beer?

Reason 2 to write fiction: Entertainment

A second reason, among the many, to write fiction has to do with entertainment.

I’m old school maybe, but my concept of fiction is that its primary purpose is to entertain. That entertainment can happen on many different levels and in many different ways – Proust and Zane Gray both have entertainment value, though usually not for the same person.

Entertainment should not be the primary purpose of nonfiction. That may be even quaint notion these days, and it may certainly seem odd coming from someone who writes narrative nonfiction (which Rangers at Dieppe was), since by definition narrative nonfiction employs the strategies of fiction. But it goes back to my belief that nonfiction has to hew to the truth of the specific reality it deals with. If entertainment becomes more important than that reality, then it ceases to be nonfiction.

Leopards Kill was a pretty dark book through a lot of stretches, but I hope the story was entertaining to read throughout. If it had been nonfiction, I think readers would have come away with a very different experience, probably not one as hopeful, and I know not as clear cut.

(To be continued . . .)

Franky

Franky’s a trooper up at the barracks. Usually you don’t find him at O’Hara’s, but tonight he was there. Usually he doesn’t talk much, but tonight he did.

“They gave me the job because the zone sergeant was away. One of the BCI guys offered to do it, but there’s something about the uniform, you know? Supposed to steady them. I went over right away, figured get it going, get it done. The lieutenant was on his way behind me, and maybe I should have waited, but I’m not good at waiting. I got out of the car and put my hat on, started up the driveway. Halfway to the door I saw a kid’s trike.

"It was too late to turn back.

"She knew as soon as she opened the door. I don’t know how, don’t know why, but she knew. The tears were rolling out of her eyes before I even told her. Before I even said the word, before I said dead . . .”

Somebody came over to the end of the bar and asked for another Scotch and a bag of chips. The bartender flipped the TV over to the Knicks, and started drying glasses.

I bought Franky another beer. After a while, I drove him home.

The day Vincent lost it

Vincent worked in an office tower, proof-reading invoice orders for the corporate purchasing department. He rebelled as best he could, sometimes changing orders for 1-ply toilet paper to 2-ply. Most of his coworkers thought he was a force for good.
But he didn't get along too well with his boss. She was a New Age type and had a habit of using furry little stuffed animals to make obscure points during section meetings. She'd squirrel up her lips and shake her head every time a typo got through.
Vincent gradually got to the point where he couldn't stand it any more. So one day he decided to take matters into his own hands. He smuggled his father's Colt .45 past the security people in the lobby. As soon as he got off the elevator he started waving it around and yelling.
Everyone ran for their lives.
Vincent went to his boss's office and barricaded himself inside. They he took all her stuffed animals and lined them up on the desk.
It took two full clips to off them all.
By the time the police came, he was standing next to the coffee machine, calming sipping a decaf.
His lawyer is toying with the idea of justifiable homicide.

Bounty Hunter Bob (2) . . .

Despite appearances, Bounty Hunter Bob was, and is, a generous sort, and also the sort who doesn't turn down the chance to have a drink in the middle of the day, or any other time. We ended up going down the street to the Derby, which at the time was owned by a friend and a half of mine. The half-friend was behind the bar, which was good, because that meant we only paid for one round out of two.

If my friend had been there, not only would we have to pay for every drink, he would have put us on the hook for the potato chips, too.

After his second or maybe third beer, Bounty Hunter Bob started telling me his life story. Or one version of it - I found out later the story tends to change depending on which bar he's in.

Hewasn’t really a low-life bounty hunter bum. He was a low-life private detective bum. Somewhere in the dim past he’d been a lawyer and been disbarred. Not for taking money or anything like that: it was a divorce case, he was repping the husband, and ended up sleeping with the wife. Pretty hard to figure, if you ever saw Bob. . . .

Bounty Hunter Bob (1)

I first met Bounty Hunter Bob in a parking lot in Poughkeepsie back when I had less of a temper.

I’d just had lunch with a political hack I knew and was about to get into my car when a dark sedan whipped up from behind, blocking me in. Two guys jumped out. One of them had a very pretty, very large and very shiny magnum revolver in his hand, which he pointed in my direction.

“You keep pointing that fucking gun at my head and somebody’s going to be sorry,” I said.

The odds were very strong that it was going to be me, but I didn’t think adding that would help the situation.

“Easy now,” said Bounty Hunter Bob, coming around the other side. His cheap brown suit wasn’t buttoned, probably to better expose the 9 mm stuck in his belt. “I need to see some ID.”

“Show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

Bob got this dumb-shit grin on his face and pulled out his wallet.

“So you’re a private investigator,” I told him. “So what?”

“No fair. You said you’d show me yours.”

I pulled out my wallet. Because a deal’s a deal, and that was still a very pretty cannon his sidekick was aiming at me.

“Just a coincidence, friend,” he said. “Check it out.”

He showed me a police bulletin for a suspected murderer in Wyoming or Utah or some other state I’d never been to at the time. The guy had a car like mine, and was about my height and weight.

“But he’s probably carrying a gun and is an asshole besides,” said Bob, taking the bulletin back. He gestured to his henchman, who got back in the car.

“Who says I’m not?”

Bob laughed.

"So when you buying me a beer?" I asked . . .

File under Missed Opportunities . . .

We were sitting at the bar Sunday afternoon during the Vampire Convention in Saratoga when a woman came over and said, "I'm the belly dancer who strips."

Just then the beer came and I had to turn around to pay. When I looked back, the belly dancer/stripper had been vaporized by a flash of sunlight from the nearby window. All that remained was some lint on the floor.

Next time, I start drinking earlier in the day.

A winner born every minute . . .


Dogboy was so excited last night that he offered to buy.

"And not just the cheap stuff," he said, slamming a five on the bar. "Some of that imported draft pee you like. Man's beer."

Five didn't buy much at the bar we were at, but the thought was what counted.

"Married life agrees with you, huh?" I said. I hadn't seen him since he and Mama Squeeze made their hookup legal.

"Marriage - uh, don't know about that." He smiled and waved the bartender over.

His pupils weren't dilated, and his nose looked normal. So why was he in, not a good mood, but a buying good mood?

"I'm a lucky man," he told me while we waited for our beers. "Check it out."

Dogboy pulled out his cellphone and clicked up an email he'd saved.

De Lotto (Electronic Lotreij)
Postbox 3074
2280 GB Rijswijk
The Netherlands
www.lotto.nl

Our dear certified winner,

The Board of Directors of Netherlands lottery promotions announces to you as 1 of our 10th lucky Winners of this year annual New year Christmas Bonanza draw held on 29th of October 2007, here in United Kingdom. All participants for category A (online version) were selected randomly from World Wide Web (www) through computer balloting system drawn from over 100,000 names database, union associations and corporate bodies that are listed online. And your email address emerged alongside with 9 other as category .A. winner. Consequently you are therefore been approved for a payout of 2,000,000.00 (Two million Pounds) only.

The following particulars are attached to your lottery payment order.

I started laughing.

"Yo, what's so funny?" said Dogboy.

"Are you kidding me? It's a scam."

"Shit it is."

"It's one of those Nigerian things."

"That's where you're wrong A-hole. It's from the Netherlands. Whole other place. You are just one cynical son of a bitch. You probably don't even believe in Christmas."

I ended up paying for the beers myself, just like always.

Softball questions . . .

So my travel agent screwed up and instead of sending me to Romania I ended up in northern New Jersey. It was an understandable mistake and I'm sure a lot of people don't know the difference. So far it's been unending fun and if I squint at the signs just right they look like they're Romanian.

Some of them are probably written in Romanian, part of the New Jersey transportation department's campaign to make getting around the state even more impossible than it already is. I'd slow down enough to identify the alphabet but traveling at anything less than the speed of a Bruce Springsteen song is dangerous here.

Fortunately I spent some formative years in the state and every so often I pass a landmark that looks familiar. There was a cemetery I passed last night where I'm sure I puked in when I was fourteen or fifteen. Several times, in fact.

The puking, not the passing. Once I saw it I found my way easily.

I still have some time here but so far I haven't gotten lost and even have learned a thing or two. The tour started with a reading group that graciously allowed me to sit closest to the door and didn't even bother to insist I check my weapons. They asked easy questions, too, like, "Who's your favorite author?"

The last one who bought me a drink, of course.

They got a bum rap

PHILADELPHIA (Oct. 22) - Philadelphia is home to the least attractive people in the United States, a survey of visitors and residents showed on Friday.

I can think of twenty places worse just out of the cities I've been to in the past year . . .

Creative excuses

So I didn't get much work done yesterday because a helicopter spent about an hour circling my house. I finally got annoyed and took the binoculars to check him out - like to see who I'm shooting before letting loose. All I could see was some bozo leaning out the cockpit with a camera in his face. Chopper buzzed out soon after.

Talked to one of my editors and he wasn't impressed:

"This isn't going to end up being an excuse for missing a deadline, is it?"

What my neighbors are like . . .

Man charged with Halloween siege of neighbor's house, lawn ornament

October 12, 2007

Highland — This Halloween trick ended up with the suspect behind bars.

An intoxicated man attacked his neighbor's inflatable Halloween lawn decoration and then used his head to smash a window to get inside the home Thursday night, according to state police in Highland.

Dawn Garcia said she could hear hollering and swearing outside her home on Kisor Road Thursday night. She spotted her neighbor, John Odee, struggling with the inflatable decoration of three ghosts and a pumpkin.

"He was enraged. I could see that," Garcia said.

When she yelled at him to go away, she said Odee started running toward the house. As she and three of her children scrambled to get out the back door, she heard the window glass breaking.

She called 911 from a neighbor's house, and state police and Town of Lloyd police arrived to find Odee inside the house. They took him into custody after a brief struggle.

The rest of the story . . .

http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071012/NEWS/710120390

Typical Rogue Warrior reader

Grandmother-type going on a trip to Europe . . . gets stopped at the airport . . . taken out of line because her purse contains a nail file . . . and a percussion grenade. . . .

"Hey, I'm from New York," she explains. "You take away our nail files and our flash-bangs, we're defenseless . . ."