Stealing Cars (5)

(started 6/13)

Jeff pulled up near the steps to the train platform.

“You got your ticket?” he asked Stephen.

“I don’t need no tickey. I’m driving back.”

“The hell you are. Even if you had a car – you’re drunk, dude.”

“So many cars here.” Stephen bent his head past Jeff to survey the lot. “There’s got to be one with the keys in the ignition. Or screw it, I’ll just jump it.”

“You don’t even know how.”

“Ha. Watch me.”

“You’re drunk. Go home to your wife.”

“My wife.” Stephen dipped his head, then turned and looked in the other direction. “I think it’ll be that Nissan Z over there. What do you say?”

“I say the train will be here any minute.”

Stephen grabbed the door handle, snapped it back and got out. Then he leaned back into the car, his breath heavy with booze.

“You comin’?” he asked.

“Where? New York?”

“Steal a car.”

“Screw you.”

Stephen laughed, then slammed the door shut. The window was still open.

“See ya,” he said. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Happy B-day.”

“Happy B-day. B-day.” Stephen leaned down against the door. “I am taking a car.”

“Don’t call me when you get caught.”

"I never get caught,” he said, his voice firm. “That’s the shame of it.”

“Right.” Jeff put the car in gear.

Driving over the bridge, Jeff heard the train’s horn in the distance and wondered if Stephen was getting on.

He would.

Probably.

Maybe not.

“Always was an asshole,” Jeff said aloud. Then he turned the radio on to drown out the train.

Stealing cars (4)

Started 6/13

“What we oughta do is steal a car,” said Stephen, pulling himself inside Jeff’s Honda. “For old time’s sake.”

“Old time’s sake? We never stole cars.”

“Why not?”

“Because we weren’t thieves.”

Jeff checked his watch. The last train out of Beacon left in twenty minutes – just enough time.

“I ain’t livin’ in the past, Jeffy. I’m movin’ forward,” said Stephen.

“The booze is what’s movin’,” said Jeff. He laughed uneasily, hoping he wasn't as drunk as his friend.

“We gotta steal a car tonight. That’s what we gotta do.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m serious.”

“You’re outa your fuckin’ mind. You work on Wall Street, for christsakes. You gotta big job.”

“We gotta steal a car.”

Stephen didn’t answer. Neither spoke again until they were three-fourths of the way over the bridge.

"A fast car," said Stephen. "Not a piece of shit."

(to be continued . . .)

Stealing cars (3)

“It’s a miracle we never got arrested, half the stuff we did.” Stephen picked up the shot glass and downed the vodka in a gulp. Then he pushed it across the bar for a refill. Skye was the best you could do here.

“We never did anything they would arrest us for,” said Jeff.

“Shit on that,” said Stephen. The bartender wasn’t responding, so Stephen took out his wallet and unfolded a hundred.

No, I’m paying,” said Jeff. “It’s your birthday.”

“Don’t sweat it, boy. I’m rich.” Stephen held his stare a second, then started to laugh.

“You ain’t rich,” said Jeff, serious, and a little offended.

Stephen laughed even harder. “Who cares?” he said, sticking the hill in the glass like a flag.

...to be continued

Stealing cars (2)

“I can’t imagine doing that commute every day,” Stephen told Jeff when he saw him on the platform at Beacon. “Shit.”

“Shit yourself. How are you?”

Jeff gave him a bear hug and an arm punch, and they were on their way. Stephen was tense, more on edge than in the city a month ago when they’d hit the Stadium together and walked up the block for something to eat. But he shrugged when Jeff asked if something was up, and Jeff dropped it.

"Old place hasn’t changed, huh?” said Stephen as they drove to the river where the restaurant was.

Newburgh had changed a lot, Jeff thought, but he didn’t say it.

“Man, the things we used to do here, huh?” added Stephen.

“We had fun.”

“Newburgh – city of sin. But we made it out alive.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Oh yeah. You’re still a prisoner.” Stephen turned to Jeff, suddenly animated. “Go down Dobbs and over to Johnson.”

"Bullshit on that. This ain’t the place to screw around.”

"Just do it.”

“No way. I value my life.”

“Why?” said Stephen, with an edge. But he let it drop.

(to be continued)

Stealing Cars (1)

Stephen was turning 30 and Jeff decided to do something special, take him out like the old days when they were kids in Newburgh. For the past few years they’d been drifting apart – since Stephen got married mostly – but when they were kids they were tight, knew what the other was thinking by the way he squinted.

Stephen was in finance on Wall Street. He lived in the city but if he didn’t he’d have a house near the river, a big empty place where Jeff’s boss would tell him to add twenty bucks to the standard charge when he went on a maintenance call. Jeff was an AC tech for a local company, had his own truck, doing pretty good in his eyes and compared to most people he knew, except Stephen. Stephen was in a whole other class, able to score Ranger tickets where they brought the food to you and you felt the cold of the ice.

“You want to party?” Jeff asked when he sent the text. “Up here? B-Day????” It took nearly the whole day for Stephen to get back to him. “Ynot?”

(to be continued)

Bernie the plumber (8)

(this started on April 8)

Bernie rose, cocking his arm back to swing at the man in the suit

“Bernie, let’s go,” said his wife, her voice almost a whisper.

Tonight, of all nights – tonight he wasn’t going to be stopped.

“Bernie. Please.”

A lifetime passed as his muscle flooded with blood. Then the dealer began shutting down the table, the other players drifted off, and Bernie stood alone with his wife.

On the long drive home, neither spoke. Mary wondered why she felt so terrible for doing the right thing. Bernie didn’t feel anything at all.

Bernie the plumber (7)

Bernie felt his heart pumping. Finally, tonight, he was doing what he’d dreamed of so long ago, cutting loose.

It was the long moment before the wall.

He turned his cards over to double up. But as the dealer reached to deal, a hand came across the table and stopped him.

“You’re done tonight, Champ,” said the tall man in the pinstriped suit who’d grabbed the dealer’s arm. “Good night.”

“What?” said Bernie.

“Good night.”

The man put his hands on his hips. He was big – far bigger than Bernie. His neck was thick and his nose pushed off to the left.

“No,” said Bernie.

“Give him five,” the man told the dealer, pointing to the hundred dollar chips. “Then he’s gone.”

Two other men appeared behind him. They were even bigger than he was.

(more to come)

Bernie the plumber (6)

Bernie’s wife paced near the bar, two tables from where Bernie was playing. He was acting crazy, out of control – he’d bought five thousand dollars worth of chips, using his credit card. It was money they didn’t have, money they’d have trouble repaying, given the economy.

What really bothered her was the look on his face. She’d seen him look that way only once before. It was years ago, but she remembered it vividly, as if it were acid-etched in her brain.

Someone had backed into their car and not stopped. Bernie chased him down, cutting other cars off, even going up on a curb before finally cornering the driver at a light. Bernie jumped out and pounded on the windshield, screaming at the man, who stayed put until the police came.

Bernie was the one who was almost arrested.

She looked across the room at him now. He was going to play all night. He was going to lose all their money.

And more than that.

“Excuse me,” she said to the bartender. “Who’s in charge here? I mean, really in charge?”

(more to come)

Bernie the plumber (5)



(more to come)

Bernie the plumber (4)

Bernie got a streak going at the blackjack table. He was up a hundred bucks, then two hundred.

But that was nothing. He was going for it tonight, going all the way. He was either walking out a rich man, or broke.

Probably the latter.

He felt as if he was racing headlong toward a wall. He looked forward to the moment just before contact, the sweet grasp of fate before the oblivion of pain.

(more to come)

Bernie the plumber (3)

Bernie went to work as usual the next day. Just before lunch, a building inspector gave him a hard time about the vent work on one of his houses. The inspector was full of it, just throwing his weight around, but Bernie didn’t say anything, just nodded and shrugged.

He was home by four-thirty. The kids were already at Mary’s sister’s.

Bernie shaved, put on a clean pair of jeans and a button-down shirt he hadn’t worn in years.

“You’re wearing aftershave,” said his wife when he came down.

“You ready?” he asked.

“Where we going?”

“Atlantic City,” he said, heading for the car.

(More to come. This story started April 8)

Bernie the plumber (2)

“We need a sitter tomorrow,” Bernie told his wife Mary when he got home.

She looked at him funny. It had been quite a while since they’d gone out on anything resembling a date – and even longer, years and years, since Bernie had initiated it.

“Great,” she said.

“Great,” he said, and got a beer from the fridge.

(more to come)

Bernie the plumber (1)

Bernie had been a plumber since he was a kid, lugging toolboxes for his dad. Now he had his own truck, own company, own helper. But lately, copper and black pipe weren’t thrilling him. Some days he’d be on a job and forget what he was doing in the middle of it. He’d wander off, go sit in the truck while his helper finished up.

Things drifted on until one morning he got in the truck and drove. Not to the worksite, just drove. He did the same thing the next day, and the day after that.

When Bernie finally made it to work three or four afternoons later, his helper gave him notice. Bernie said he was sorry to lose him, paid him off with a bonus, and took him to lunch at Burger King.

For a few weeks, Bernie was back to his old self, up early, working late, on top of his job. But then one day on his way back home Bernie put on the radio and heard a song he’d listened to when he was sixteen or seventeen, a Bruce Springsteen song, something from Darkness on the Edge of Town.

He remembered hearing it for the first time. He thought of that the whole way home, how it had felt like it had changed his life, had set him on a different course from his father.

He thought of how that hadn’t come true.

He thought of what he should have done, would have done, could have done.

It was a long drive home.

(more to come)

Blind Tommy & Father Gerard (10)

Ordinarily, the detective from out of state did not attend the extradition hearing. But today was Detective O’Flattery’s last day on the job, and as a matter of personal pride, he wanted to be there.

One of the guards passed along the information that Father Gerard wanted to speak to him. The detective took a certain personal, professional pride in that, though he despised the priest. Gerard – he refused to call him father any longer – was the kind of man that had hurt the Catholic church deeply.

“What can I do for you, father?” asked O’Flattery when he met him in the hall.

Father Gerard shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? No confession?”

The priest knew he was being mocked. “An innocent man has no need to confess,” replied the priest.

“Right,” said the detective.

Father Gerard turned away from him, prodding the two sheriff’s deputies to take him into court. His head felt clear; it had been days since he’d had a drink. And for the first time in his life, he knew he would never have another one.

Just outside the courtroom, he was met by a court-appointed lawyer, a young woman not too long out of law school who stood shifting her weight from foot to foot as she spoke.

“I’m your lawyer,” she told him, sticking out her hand. She began to explain the process.

“It’s all right,” he told her. “They’ll convict me no matter what you do. So it’s all right.”

“You can’t give up.”

“I haven’t,” he told her. “For the first time in many, many years, I haven’t given up at all.”

(end)

Blind Tommy & Father Gerard (9)

Father Gerard slept fitfully that night. Finally, sometime in the early morning, he had a dream.

He was in the chapel where Sister Agnes had been murdered. He was kneeling, and praying for guidance – something he had not done in many, many years.

A voice came from behind him.

“You gave your oath as a priest. A confession is a confession”

Father Gerard spun around. Blind Tommy stood behind him. So did Sister Agnes, blood gaping from her wounds. She put one hand on Blind Tommy’s shoulder.

The other stretched toward him.

Father Gerard spent the rest of the night lying awake, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the jail above him, thinking of everything he had done in his life, but mostly thinking of his time as a priest.

Nearly all of it had been a waste. Much of the good he could have done had been washed away by liquor. Over many years, his spirit had grown ever smaller, the voice of God within him fainter and fainter.

As a young man, he had longed for God to call him to do one great thing, one act that would touch many souls.

But God had never responded.

Until now.

But what was he supposed to do? Let a real murderer go free? Should he take his place in prison?

If he knew that Blind Tommy had reformed, perhaps it would be different. If he was sure that the confession had been legitimate, perhaps it would be different.

What sort of test had God given him?

(more to come)

Blind Tommy & Father Gerard (8)

Father Gerard was stunned. The charge that he had killed the nun was outrageous. Even worse, the detective had woven an entire narrative to explain the crime. According to O’Flattery, the nun was about to have him reassigned for drinking, and Father Gerard didn’t want to leave his cushy hospital job. The story was absurd.

And yet everyone believed it, even the archbishop. He offered Father Gerard scant support; he wouldn’t even find funds for a lawyer.

Perhaps, Father Gerard thought, from the distance he did look guilty. He had been nearby.

He hadn’t liked the nun. But then, no one who knew her did either. She was a severe woman who liked nothing and felt no one else should, either. The only jobs anyone ever gave her were ones she could do entirely by herself.

Father Gerard knew who the murderer was. To free himself, he only had to reveal the confession.

At first, he was in so much disbelief that he didn’t consider doing that. He was in something close to shock – arrested, taken to a small, dank jail, he felt abandoned. For the first time in years he thought of Christ in the garden before his arrest, abandoned by his apostles.

A day passed. He was the only prisoner in the dank cell block, which smelled of rotten cabbage. He wasn’t allowed a drink; his body began going through withdrawal. At the end of the day, Father Gerard decided he would tell everything he knew. Replaying what had happened between himself and Blind Tommy so many years before, he decided that the confession lacked the elements necessary for it to be a “legal” confession. There would be no sin in revealing it.

In the morning, he stuck his face between the metal bars of the door.

“I want to speak to Detective O’Flattery,” he yelled.

The guard at the end of the block lumbered down in his direction.

“What are you saying?” asked the officer.

“I have important information for the detective on my case.”

“You can talk to him tomorrow, at the extradition hearing,” said the guard. “You want my advice, though – whatever you want to say, you ought to save it for your lawyer.”

“I don’t have a lawyer. I don’t need one. I’m innocent.”

The guard began to laugh. “Right Father.”

Father Gerard sank onto his cot, dejected. There was no hope.

(more to come)

Blind Tommy & Father Gerard (7)

Father Gerard had hit rock bottom long before Detective O’Flattery came to arrest him, but neither the detective nor the priest knew that.

Gerard was still a priest, but just barely. Even at a time when the church was struggling to find celebrants for mass, Father Gerard couldn’t find a regular job. He spent a great deal of time wandering in his mind, thinking of his youth, of what he might have done. He often thought he had made a mistake becoming a priest. He couldn’t remember why he had made the decision, though by now it was far too late for him to reverse it.

Detective O’Flattery tracked Father Gerard down through the diocese to a home for retired priests in Maine, where he was living on the sufferance of the director, an old classmate from the seminary. He called him one afternoon, asking vague questions about Sister Agnes’s death. The priest gave what details he could about the murder, omitting Blind Tommy’s confession. The conversation was short, and pleasant. In truth, Father Gerard was pleased that anyone would want to talk to him about anything, and when he hung up he wished he had spoken longer.

The conversation they had two days later, going over the same points, was longer, but not nearly as nice. The detective, respectful at first, seemed openly skeptical and even antagonistic, so much so that Father Gerard concluded he was drinking – a failing he was very familiar with, and hung up on him.

Three days later, Detective O'Flattery arrived at the rectory to arrest Father Gerard for the murder of Sister Agnes.

(more to come)

Blind Tommy & Father Gerard (6)

In many police departments, detective approaching their retirement date find they have little to do. No one wants to give a “short timer” an important case, because if he leaves in the middle of it, most likely it will never be closed. So over the last few weeks of his career, Detective O’Flattery found himself with a lot of time on his hands. A classic workaholic, he searched for some way of being productive. One day in a fit of nostalgia, he began reviewing the case notes on the Sister Agnes murder.

As he went through the notes – most of which were now on very yellowed paper – he realized that he and the two detectives helping him had not done a very good job interviewing either of the priests at the crime scene. This was hardly the only flaw in the investigation – the crime scene itself had not been secured properly, and the forensics were a joke – but it was one of the few mistakes he could fix, or at least attempt to fix.

Father Chris happened to be easy to find – he was the parish priest one town over from where Detective O’Flattery lived. Father Chris’s memory for details was not the best, but he did remember one thing that O’Flattery found immediately significant: Father Gerard had acted very strangely that morning.

“How well did he know Sister Agnes?” asked O’Flattery.

The detective was actually wondering whether the priest had been very close to the nun and thus deeply troubled by her death; in that case, it might be worth tracking him down for some lacking details. Father Chris took the question differently, and surprised him with the answer.

“He didn’t like her at all. They were always having disagreements,” said Father Chris. “Sister Agnes knew he drank, and called him on it regularly.”

And from that one remark, Detective O’Flattery’s course was set.

(more to come . . .)

Blind Tommy & Father Gerard (5)

Sister Agnes’s body was laid out on the altar. A crime scene expert would later tell the press that the murderer had deliberately arranged it to satisfy a some ritual that was taking place deep within his subconscious. The expert would also point out that the sister’s arms were spread in the manner of Christ’s when He was on the cross, and that six of the wounds were similar to those said to be suffered by Christ when He was crucified.

He offered no theory about the other fifty stab wounds that perforated the nun’s body.

Though she had not been sexually molested, e nun’s skirt had been pulled up above her waist, leaving her body exposed.

Father Gerard, of course, knew that Blind Tommy had committed the murder. But he couldn’t tell the police that. Blind Tommy had confessed to him, and the vow of secrecy during confession was inviolate.

Was it a real confession? Father Gerard agonized over the question. It certainly wasn’t formal or traditional, and yet Blind Tommy certainly believed that he was gaining absolution. Was that the measure of the sacrament?

Another priest might have sought out a confessor or other spiritual advisor to discuss the point, but Father Gerard sought only his familiar whiskey. Once or twice he tried to bring up the matter with a superior, but always lost his courage as the conversation turned to his own weaknesses. Meanwhile, the police spent all their energy looking for a suspect profiled by the expert, who believed he was of high intelligence and deep convictions. Blind Tommy wasn’t even a suspect.

Drinking heavily, Father Gerard soon lost his post at the hospital. His assignments began a steady spiral downward. No job is insignificant to the Lord, but in the Catholic hierarchy, there is significance and then there is significance, and then there are the jobs that Father Gerard was given.

Sister Agnes’s murder was forgotten by most people. Blind Tommy moved away. Father Gerard had his own problems.

Eventually, the only person that remembered the story was a local police detective named O’Flattery. It was the only murder case he’d ever been assigned. Failing to solve it had ruined any chance he had of getting a better job. Worse, it offended him deeply. The detective hadn’t gone to Catholic school, and so had a benign, even saintly view of nuns. For ten years following the murder, he swore to himself that he would solve it.

And then, two weeks before he was due to retire, he did.

(more to come)

Blind Tommy & Father Gerard (4)

Speechless, Father Gerard waited for Blind Tommy to explain what had happened. But Blind Tommy said nothing else. The priest didn’t know if Blind Tommy was fantasizing, or if he had actually committed murder.

Neither seemed possible.

“Give me my penance,” said Blind Tommy. “What’s my penance?”

Years later, Father Gerard wouldn’t remember exactly what he said., though he was sure he did say something. He didn’t grant absolution – the sacrament requires a certain form, not to mention a demonstration of remorse and willingness to repent that were difficult to discern under the circumstances. But whatever he said, Blind Tommy’s face lit up with relief. He thought he was absolved. He shook Father Gerard’s hand vigorously, then ran off.

Still unsure what was going on, Father Gerard went into the building. There he was met by the other priest assigned to the hospital, Father Chris, whose face was stone white.

"Sister Agnes is dead," said the other priest. "Killed on the altar in the chapel. The police are on the way."

(more to come)