The Electron Pencil

BLACK COMEDY

By Michael G. Glab

© 2013

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— Forty-three —

The ride east on North Avenue is enough to dislodge anyone’s internal organs on a normal day, what with the patches of buckled pavement here and the potholes there. Today is even worse as Barry Paulsen’s 1962 Ford Falcon judders along with Anthony in the passenger seat. The car has a manual stick and Barry may be a fine attorney but he’s a lousy shifter. Barry’s been trying to sell the car to Anthony for a few weeks now. Since neither knows the first thing about cars, Barry’s grinding of the gears does not dampen Anthony’s interest in the vehicle.

The two have hardly spoken a word to each other since Barry called to tell Anthony the Chairman is dead. Barry has known Fred Hampton for a couple of years now. Anthony, of course, met him just this past summer. But both had a kind of love for the young man who just this moment is being sliced open like a Christmas goose on Cook County coroner Andrew J. Toman’s autopsy table. Anthony has no need to ask any questions about his death. He’s expected it since the day he first exchanged a soul handshake with the Chairman. So has Barry. For that matter, so did the Chairman.

Fredrick Allen Hampton had a way of making people love him. And that, both Barry and Anthony tacitly understand, is what got him killed. The details really don’t matter now.

The Chairman

■

But the details will come spilling out this morning. Barry flicks on the car radio. It’s the news. The first story, the only story, is the Chairman.

Fred Hampton and fellow Black Panther Mark Clark were killed this morning in a predawn raid by police officers assigned to State’s Attorney Edward Halloran. Halloran’s office told WGN radio the officers were serving a search warrant for weapons when they were fired upon and returned fire. No police officers were reported hurt. Hampton’s revolutionary rhetoric….

Barry backs into a parking space on Augusta Boulevard. He and Anthony walk the block and a half to the Wood Street police station, the only sound being the crunching under their feet of what remains of a sunrise dusting of snow. In his mind, Barry figures the cops were lugging the Chairman, all zipped up in a black body bag, down the steps of his apartment building right about the time the snow was falling. He hasn’t yet seen the photograph that ran on the front page of the Sun-Times this morning. It shows those very patrolmen balancing the litter bearing the Chairman out of the apartment at 2337 West Monroe Street. To a man, they are smiling, as if their team has just scored a touchdown at a key moment in the game. And, in fact, it has.

■

Barry and Anthony elbow their way past the mob of reporters outside the cop shop entrance. There are more than a handful of angry looking young black men milling around outside as well. Two cops are posted on either side of the front entrance, each armed with a shotgun, just in case those angry looking young men get any funny ideas. Barry flashes his attorney’s credentials at the front desk officer. “We’re here to see Deborah Johnson,” Barry says. It takes Anthony a moment to associate the name with the Chairman’s girlfriend, who just happens to be eight months pregnant and is sitting in her bedclothes and slippers in the basement lockup. Anthony had always heard Fred Hampton’s girlfriend referred to as Sister Deb. But it clicks soon enough.

Anthony thinks, This is what’s important. Not some silly crap Anna wants to hash over.

Upon hearing Johnson’s name, the desk officer narrows his eyes and turns the edges of his mouth down, as if someone has just shown him a photo of dog shit smeared on a dinner plate. The officer makes a big production of checking Barry’s ID photo against his face. He glances at Anthony. “Who’s d’is?” he asks. “My assistant,” Barry lies. “Yer both gonna hafta get frisked,” the cop tells them. Anthony leans forward to protest but Barry heads him off. “Let’s just get it over with,” he whispers

Two patrolmen take their sweet time patting Anthony and Barry down. Anthony wonders why they spend so much time reaching around his inner thighs so he asks Barry about it as they descend the stairs to the basement. “That’s just to show you they can do anything the want with you,” Barry whispers again. “Just to let you know they can shove their fists up your ass if they want.” Anthony actually shudders.

The two are ushered into a small room with unadorned walls covered by countless coats of paint, the latest of which is some indeterminate shade of green. This non-color is made even more bilious by the piercing fluorescent light hanging by two chains from the ceiling. Anthony and Barry cool their heels for what seems twenty minutes until finally the door creaks open and a matron escorts Deborah Johnson in. “Ten minutes,” the matron says. She closes the door and leaves the three alone.

Sister Deb

■

Deb’s hair is a fright. She smells of sleep. Her eyes are puffy, yet there’s something more to them — something Anthony instantly concludes is murderous rage. Barry asks her how she is and she shrugs. He apologizes and tells her that since there isn’t much time, she must tell him exactly what happened, quickly. Deborah Johnson never asks the attorney who the frizzy-haired kid sitting next to him is. Anthony sits and listens. He realizes as soon as he hears the first sentence she utters he’ll never forget a single word of Sister Deb’s story.

They came to murder him.

We were asleep in the bed. Sumthin’ was wrong with Brother Fred, I know it. We ate dinner around midnight. Brother Fred looked like he liked to fall out before he was finished eatin’. We weren’t even drinkin’, you dig? Like, no spirits. We had Kool-Aid. So don’t nobody tell you he was drinkin’. I reminded him to call his Mama. She’s been insistin’ that he call up every single night before he goes to bed. She was afraid they were gonna kill her boy. She was right.

Right in the middle of talkin’ to his Mama, Brother Fred fell out. Just like that, asleep in the telephone chair. I had to practically carry him to the bed. He was dead weight. I got his pants off but that’s all. He couldn’t cooperate, you know? There was sumthin’ wrong. Sumthin’ real wrong.

Brother Mark took first watch. He was in that raggedy ole chair by the door in the front room. He had a shotgun, like every night. Brother Otis said he’d take the second watch so he went out somewhere. I don’t know where. He’s the lucky one.

Once I got Brother Fred in the bed it took me a long time to fall to sleep because I was listening to him breathin’. Sometimes I thought he done stopped breathin’ but right when I was ready to call somebody for help, he’d take a big breath. It must have been an hour, I guess, yeah, an hour before I could tell he was breathin’ regular. I thought whatever it is, he’ll sleep it off. It took me another hour to fall asleep myself.

I don’t know what time it was but it was still pitch black out when I heard the bangin’, like someone liked to break the doors down. I heard Brother Mark say, ‘What up?’

Deborah Johnson falls silent for a few moments. She stares straight ahead, looking at neither of the two men in the small room with her. Nor is she looking at the sick green wall directly before her. She’s looking through it. Anthony watches her eyes. There’s no sign of tears in them. She continues.

I ain’t gonna never hear Brother Mark say another word. There was a shot. Louder than anything. And then there was another one, louder than that. I shook Brother Fred but he wouldn’t get up. I shook him and shook him and shook him.

She falls silent again and stares before she continues.

The shootin’ started for real. It was like a war. Like Vietnam. Like World War II. I didn’t say a word. They must have had machine guns and shotguns. I know I heard automatic guns. I heard cracks like pistols. There were bullets comin’ right through the bedroom, right over us. I hit Brother Fred with my hand on his face, like slappin’ him. All he could do was lift his head just a little bit so I know he was alive but I pushed his head back into the pillow. He wasn’t hit. The bullets were comin’ from both sides, the front and the back. They were goin’ both ways over us. I pressed Chairman Fred down on the bed then I got on top of him, to protect him, like.

Then the shootin’ stopped. I heard heavy runnin’ all around. These two men in suits came into the bedroom. They weren’t in blue uniforms, you know? They were in suits like Hoover’s men. I don’t know who they were, but they were the Pigs. One of them yelled out, ‘Hey, we got a broad here!’ He grabbed me by the wrist and yanked me up. He looked at my belly. He went, ‘She’s pregnant.’ They pushed me off to some other men in suits. They definitely had automatic weapons. I saw ‘em. They took me into the kitchen and made me sit down. The first two men were in the room alone with Brother Fred. I heard one of ‘em say, ‘That’s Fred Hampton.’ The other man said, ‘Is he dead? Bring him out.’ Then that first man said, ‘He’s barely alive. He’ll make it.’ Then I heard them draggin’ sumthin’, like a ton of bricks.

Deborah Johnson turns silent a third time, this the longest silence of all.

Then I heard two shots. Bang. Bang. That second man said, ‘He’s good and dead now.’

■

The door creaks open. The matron says, “That’s it. You’re done.”

Deborah, Barry, and Anthony stand. “Thanks, Sister Deborah,” Barry says. “I’m so sorry.” Deb Johnson looks right through him. The matron holds Deborah by the elbow. “C’mon,” she says. Deborah follows her silently.

Barry and Anthony collapse in their chairs, spent. Neither says a word for at least three minutes. Finally, Anthony says, “I don’t know what to do.”

“I do,” Barry says. “We’re going downtown.”

“Where?”

“The County Building. Halloran’s going to have a press conference at noon. We have to be there.”

To be continued

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 All fictional characters, descriptions, and situations are the property of the author.

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BLACK COMEDY

By Michael G. Glab

© 2013

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— Forty-two —

The phone rings. It’s 6:30 in the morning.  No call at this time of day can ever bring good news. Anna picks it up. The voice on the other end asks for Anthony.

“Alright,” she says. “I’ll get him.” Barefoot, she shuffles along the deep pile upstairs carpeting to the edge of the staircase. She half whispers-half hollers down, “Anthony! Anthony! Phone!”

Nothing. She mutters, “If this wakes the baby, I’m gonna brain him.” She goes down three steps, again whisper-hollering, “Anthony, phone!”

She must repeat this process three times, making it all the way down to the first floor front entrance where she can actually see Anthony, sprawled on the sofa that for so long had been her sole perch. His mouth is wide open. His eyes — as they always are when he’s asleep — are eerily half open. “Anthony!” she says, this time aloud.

“Whuh?”

“Phone! And don’t wake Chet!”

“Who is it?”

“I have no idea.”

“Just take a message.”

“I most certainly will not. I am not your secretary.”

“Alright, alright. Just tell’im to call back later. You can do that, can’t you.”

“Jesus Christ,” she says and tiptoes up the stairs. But the guy on the other end won’t go away. “It’s urgent,” he says. So Anna trudges back downstairs and proceeds to logroll Anthony off the sofa. He hits the floor with a muffled thud.

“What the hell?” he says.

“C’mon, get up. It’s important.”

Anthony scales the stairs to the second floor as if he’s walking up to the top of the John Hancock Center. He makes sure his voice sounds as groggy as possible so as to impress upon the idiot caller his utter exhaustion. But the caller is no idiot. It’s one of Anthony’s contacts from the People’s Law Office, Barry Paulsen. Anthony snaps alert hearing the tone of Barry’s voice.

He speaks clearly into the receiver. “Barry, man. What’s wrong?”

Barry says: “The Chairman is dead.”

The Chairman

■

Now Anna leans against the bathroom door and watches Anthony brush his teeth. “Where you going?” she asks.

Anthony continues brushing, then takes a huge gulp of water to gargle with. Anna grimaces as she sees gargle mist flick over the medicine chest mirror. “I said, ‘Where are you going?’”

Anthony wipes his face with the hand towel and finally responds. “They’re picking me up in twenty five minutes.”

“Who’s picking you up? Why? Where are you going? Anthony, you promised to stay home today. Damn it, we have things to talk about.”

“Anna look, this is important.”

“Hey, I’m important too. We have to talk. This involves you.”

“I haven’t got time!” Anthony says pushing past her.

Anna follows him as he grabs a clean shirt and buttons it up. “Make time,” she says.

Anthony wheels around to face her. “Anna!” he says. “Stop being a child!”

The word child cuts like a knife in the belly. Anna is about to unleash a torrent of verbal abuse upon her nominal husband when he cuts her off.

“Anna, listen to me,” he says, calmly and slowly, as if he’s addressing a brat. “The Pigs just murdered Chairman Fred.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah. So whatever you have to say can wait.”

Anna remains silent for a moment. Anthony descends the stairs, takes his Army surplus parka off the hook near the front door, slips into it and zips it up. Anna leans over the railing and again speaks in that half whisper-half holler. “Actually,” she says, “it can’t wait.”

“Anna!” Anthony hollers. “Stop being such an infant!” The word infant is a punch to her gut. Anthony slams the door behind him.

The tips of Anna’s ears become scarlet. She hears a car door slam. The car drives off. She is — as usual — alone. She screams, “You arrogant son of a bitch!”

And now — now! — baby Chet wakes up. Anna mutters, “I’ll brain ‘im. Swear to God in heaven. I’ll brain him.”

To be continued

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 All fictional characters, descriptions, and situations are the property of the author.

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BLACK COMEDY

By Michael G. Glab

© 2013

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— Forty-one —

As far as Anthony Pontone is concerned, there’s one last glimmer of hope that this whole Changing The World business just might be worth all the killings and clubbings of the last year and a half. There’s a guy on the West Side — a kid, really — who has the magic. He’s getting people excited and he’s getting things done. He’s serious and he has energy to burn. His name is Fred Hampton.

Fred Hampton

■

Anthony has done a few stories in The Seed about the Black Panther Party’s Breakfast for Children Program that’s filling the empty bellies of a lot of poor black West Side kids. That’s how he met Hampton.

Here’s what Anthony has learned about Fred Hampton: He began making noise in the mid-60s at Proviso East High School out in Maywood, just a couple of miles west of the city limits. He earned varsity letters in football, baseball, and basketball. He won a Junior Achievement Award in 1966. He was tall and handsome — he even had dimples — and the sound of his voice could make a girl or a crowd swoon. He could have been “one of the good ones.”

But in addition to his physical prowess and magnetic personality, he had a keen eye for injustice. He looked around the slums of suburban Maywood and saw hunger and idleness, poverty and police brutality. As a high school junior, he came to the conclusion that nobody was going to help his black brothers and sisters climb out of the shithole. LBJ’s War on Poverty and Great Society were sops thrown out to keep The People quiet. The federal government wasn’t going to be our savior, Hampton told Anthony in an interview. They talk to us about pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps. Bootstraps — bullshit.

Hampton had learned early on that the only straps The Man had in mind would be used to lash the backs of those who couldn’t keep their mouths shut. Try as he might, Fred Hampton couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

He began organizing fellow Proviso East students. They demanded at first that more black teachers be hired. Then he expanded their range. There should be more black members of the town school board. Oh, and none of this Negro or Afro-American shit. We are black.

Black is beautiful. That was Hampton’s message as he criss-crossed Maywood. He led the effort to set up a Black Cultural Center in the town complete with a black history gallery. Black, baby. Black is the word.

As Anthony took his notes and did his research, he found himself, like Proviso East’s girls and the growing crowds who attended Hampton’s speeches, swooning.

The Chairman

■

Two years ago, in the fall of 1967, Hampton led a crowd of dozens of young blacks to Maywood’s city hall. They were going to demand that the town build a swimming pool and recreation center for its kids, things surrounding towns had been doing for years. But those towns, Hampton noted, were white. Why, he reasoned, can’t black kids go for a swim?

Hampton and a few others strode into the council chambers but the rest of the crowd was barred from entering by Maywood cops. There weren’t enough seats for everybody, Hampton was told. Fine, Hampton responded, we’ll stand.

Can’t do it, the cops said.

Then move the meeting to a bigger place, Hampton said.

Ha ha, the cops said.

The crowd began to stir. The cops got edgy. Someone got the bright idea to break up the crowd using tear gas. That broke them up, alright. They began racing down Maywood’s commercial strip, Fifth Avenue, breaking store windows and rocking the cars of passing motorists. Just like that, Maywood had its first riot.

Hampton was arrested and charged with mob action. News of the arrest made its way to Washington, D.C. where J. Edgar Hoover ordered his name added to the FBI’s master list of Key Agitators.

A year ago, Bobby Rush, the founder of the brand new Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers, told Hampton the Panthers needed him. Hampton did not hesitate, he jumped right into the West Side fray. Hampton brought his peculiar energy and organizational skills to the Panthers. In addition to the Breakfast program, the Party started free law and health clinics. Hampton and Rush traveled from one end of the West Side to the other, exhorting growing crowds with speeches about black self-determination. They put out their own newspaper and began a campaign that called for — whoa! wait a minute here! — community control of the police.

Panthers

■

One day Hampton demanded a hapless Good Humor man pass out all the ice cream he had in his cooler to some neighborhood kids. The Good Humor Man would tell the cops Hampton had stuck a pistol in his ribs. Hampton was quickly arrested, the cops treating him as if he’d blown up the U.S. Capitol and a church for good measure. The Chicago Police had already been briefed by Hoover’s local agents. Get ‘im, the agents urged the cops.

But if they were going to get ‘im, the cops learned quickly, they’d better run fast. Hampton flitted all over the city, trying to raise money for the Breakfast program, urging pregnant mothers to visit one of the Panthers’ free clinics, and even brokering a peace between the warring Blackstone Rangers and Eastside Disciples. Hampton had brought together the SDS, a Communist youth organization or two, a half dozen black and Puerto Rican street gangs, and the Panthers. He said that turf wars and rivalries only played into the hands of The Man, keeping minority youth in a state of perpetual poverty. In  May, Hampton held a press conference, declaring a new force in the city of Chicago — a “rainbow coalition,” in his words — comprised of thousands of young people, some of whom were not averse to packing heat. By the summer of 1969, Fred Hampton himself had become a force.

Anthony learned all this and one more thing: Everybody calls Fred Hampton “The Chairman” now.

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J. Edgar Hoover thought himself a lucky man after Martin Luther King Jr. was disposed of, but his good fortune was short lived. Right now, he might wish he had King back on his hands rather than this new kid. Here’s a kid so brazen that he comes right out says he’s a Commie rat! Talks about greedy pigs and this proletariat garbage and revolution.

At least King had the good sense to conceal his nefarious agenda. Civil rights? Bah. The burrhead was pink.

The Director

■

But this Hampton kid, he’s red through and through. What makes it even worse is he and his cohorts are armed. Hoover’s men entered into Hampton’s FBI file an interview he’d granted to the Sun-Times. “What this country has done to non-violent leaders like Martin Luther King — I think that objectively says there’s going to have to be an armed struggle,” Hampton told the reporter.

Oh, This Holy Land is in mortal peril. The gorillas are coming in from the jungle. Never has J. Edgar Hoover been so desperately needed by good Americans. This is the culmination of all his work these last fifty years. Thin blue line? Please. There’s no line standing between civilization and the wild. There’s only me. Lord in heaven, my sacred duty is before me. I will not fail you nor the good white Christians of the United States of America.

In February, the Director sent the word to his Chicago field office: infiltrate. Get someone inside that local Black Panther chapter, right now. Break up those bastards and put a stop to all those “serve the people” programs.

So the Chicago Special Agents turned up a petty thief named Otis Bryant in Cook County Jail. He wanted to get out in the worst way and the FBI was only too happy to accommodate him. All he had to do in return was go to the West Side and join the Black Panther Party.

By November, Chicago’s cops had raided Panther offices and hangouts three separate times, arresting more than a hundred gorillas. In one of the raids, in July, the cops ransacked the Panther headquarters, destroying office supplies, food cartons for the Breakfast program, and medical supplies for the free clinics. They set some small fires and beat the hell out of the Panthers they’d caught in the office. That summer shootouts between the cops and the Panthers almost became commonplace, with two dozen killed or wounded. Otis Bryant had provided his FBI handlers with invaluable inside information, which they’d passed on to the Chicago police, leading to the raids and shootouts. One problem: The cops had not yet been able to put the squeeze on Fred Hampton.

Bryant enjoyed his work. He was good at it. He rose within the Panther hierarchy. He made a lot of suggestions, some of which seemed a tad strange — like his proposal that the Panthers procure a shoulder-mounted missile launcher and aim it at the fifth floor of City Hall, the location of the mayor’s office. The rest of the Panthers laughed at this one even though Bryant was dead serious. He also suggested that the Chairman was in mortal danger from the Pigs and would need constant protection. Bryant suggested the Chairman have a 24-hour bodyguard. That was a good idea. So good that everybody agreed the bodyguard should be none other than one Otis Bryant.

Just before Thanksgiving, Bryant met with his FBI handler to collect his monthly stipend. He stuck out his right hand and clasped the thick roll of cash. With his left hand he passed along a detailed map of the apartment Fred Hampton now lived in on West Monroe Street. He’d drawn it carefully in pencil, taking special care to to indicate exactly where the Chairman’s bedroom was, even noting precisely how many inches from the door his bed was.

To be continued

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 All fictional characters, descriptions, and situations are the property of the author.

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BLACK COMEDY

By Michael G. Glab

© 2013

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— Forty —

The construction barricades and canopies surrounding the John Hancock Center were removed months ago. It’s now the most celebrated building in Chicago and the second tallest skyscraper in the world, topped only by the Empire State Building. That’s fitting for the Second City.

Thousands of Chicagoans and visitors from around the country have been drawn to this site to crane their necks awkwardly and gawk at the behemoth. Today, December 3rd, 1969, Anna Pontone is one of them. She’s been here before, of course.  She’s seen the hundred-story monument grow from a hole in the ground to a black steel and brown glass tower whose upper reaches often are shrouded in the clouds. Every time she learns she is pregnant, she walks the Magnificent Mile and ends up at 875 North Michigan Avenue.

Yeah, Anna’s pregnant again, time number three, none of which have been planned. This one is a tad less jarring than the previous two were. For one, she’s married now and so this display of fertility isn’t a mark of sluttiness or stupidity. For two, she’s essentially been alone since she and Anthony got married a year and a half ago, what with him off Making The World A Better Place. Their first child, Chet, is now tottering around their Natchez Avenue home and putting words together in little sentences. Another child just might make, with Anna and Chet, a happy little threesome, a real family.

At least that’s what Anna is fantasizing as she gazes skyward at the 1,125-foot high roof, a few high brushstroke clouds wisping above it against a deep blue sky. Anna has been able to push from her mind the knowledge that this little life growing inside her is the result of rape. The law might not say so, considering the rapist was her husband. The memory of that night on the kitchen floor in early October when Anthony dragged her to the tile floor and forcefully put himself inside her is becoming dim. It’s a hell of a lot better this way. The more Anna thought about it in the days that followed, the more she either wanted to put a knitting needle inside her womb or Anthony’s thorax, right into his no-good heart.

She thinks: This is driving me out of my mind. I don’t wanna end a life. Jesus Christ, what am I? I hate this feeling. I hate it. Knitting needles! My God! And Anthony’s my husband. I loved him! Wait a minute — what did I just say? I mean, I love him. I really do. Even though he’s such an asshole. For better or for worse right? Well, it’s for worse right now, okay? Gotta get through it. I can’t go crazy. Gotta keep my head on straight. I got a baby inside me. It’s the best thing that could have happened.

She stares upward for a moment. She thinks: I don’t want to take a life, I want to create it. I don’t want to be a killer.

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Eddie Halloran feels comfortable having a bete noir in his life. Its presence makes him focus all his energy and concentration. It keeps him from thinking about the bottle of Jameson’s stashed under the seat of his Olds Toronado while he sits in his County Building office. Boy, has he found the blackest of beasts to obsess over as the year 1969 draws to a close.

Fred Hampton

■

Fred Hampton is a handsome, articulate, passionate orator. He can hold the attention of ghetto single moms, hard-as-nails street gang members, white lefty radicals, and even liberal North Shore financial donors to his Breakfast for Children Program. Just three years ago, he was a precocious high school senior, organizing students and speaking out against racism at Proviso East in suburban Maywood. Now, he’s on the verge of national prominence.

In a speech earlier this fall, he said this: “We’re gonna fight with socialism. We’re gonna have an international proletariat revolution.” Talk like this can scare the hell out of people. Like Cook County State’s Attorney Eddie Halloran. And FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

But then Fred Hampton turned things personal. Eddie Halloran has been telling the frightened voters of Chicagoland that he and his men are fighting on the front lines against the negro South Side street gangs like the Blackstone Rangers and the Eastside Disciples. These gangs, in fact, are morphing into something more than punks who terrorize high school freshmen for their lunch money. They’re becoming a threat to Our Holy Way of Life, thinking nationally and even globally rather than restricting themselves to the schoolyard. They’ve changed their names, even — the Rangers now fancy themselves the P Stone Nation, what the hell ever that means, probably some Mau Mau shit, and the Eastside Disciples now say they’re the Black Disciples. White Chicago wonders, What is this “black” shit? Does this have to do with that “black power” stuff? What’re these crazy shines up to?

Whatever they’re up to, Eddie Halloran assures them, we’re gonna stop them. This, he says, is a War on Gangs.

Hah, Fred Hampton has responded, that’s just a code word for War on Black Youth! Fred Hampton, now the chairman of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party goes a step further. “Eddie Halloran,” he says, “is nothing more than a racist pig.”

When Eddie Halloran hears this his face turns crimson. Goddamn it, he thinks, I go to Catholic mass every goddamned Sunday morning. I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I love my fellow man. I give alms to the poor and comfort the sick. I slogged through eight years at Notre Dame and Harvard Law, hoping to devote my life to justice, hokey as it sounds. I worked days in courtrooms and nights ringing doorbells for the Party. What do I get for it? Am I a rich man? Hell, no! Sure, I got a nice Olds but I see these Mobsters driving around the neighborhood in Caddys. I’m an honest guy, a working man, when you really think about it. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll be mayor. Is that so wrong? And now this bushy-haired prick calls me a racist. I’ll be goddamned. Lord forgive me, but if I ever get my hands on that son of a bitch….

To be continued

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 All fictional characters, descriptions, and situations are the property of the author.

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