Walk

McRory, that dusty old woodpecker, somehow spots me from down the street going into Slick's, and that's one right there, then I come out for a smoke and that's nothing, but the beer in my hand is most definitely two and when he creeps up and hits the siren one time, laughing with his pointy, red head out the window, I drop the damn Heineken and it shatters on the sidewalk and he says, Littering. So that's three. Then I'm in the back of McRory's roller, and he's saying, You're like that one Bugs Bunny cartoon, where he's the pitcher. And I say, You're like that one Porky Pig cartoon. Actually, I say, you're like all of 'em. McRory laughing again.

We go way back, me and McRory. First time he busts me—'81—I open his forehead like a mango with the ring Lizzy bought me for my eighteenth. Blood spouting down his face. This one’s got some hands, McRory says, calling it in. Then he breaks my arm. Whoops, he says, and sprays a little blood off his lips into my eyes. Us two: we go back deep.

Chi-Chi and the boys are hanging out Slick’s door now, confused, hands up—que pasa? Again?

Come on, I say. I’m a year and a day for this.

Plus six in the halfway house, McRory says. For the beer.

Could just let me out, I say.

But what about our quality time?

Yankees are playing free ball. Nine-nine in the twelfth.

Game just ended, McRory says.

Bullshit.

Sure it did, he says, and then we’re quiet, bumping downtown to booking.

Word around shop is McRory’s got cancer. Late stage. Any day he's going to trade in his blues and his badge for a hospital gown. So I say, Hey pal, word is you got the tumors bad. Brain, bones, everywhere.

Just my kidney and my tit, he says.

Your tit?

Both of ‘em. Don’t fuckin’ laugh about it, neither.

So you’re all right then, I say.

Nah, he says. I’ll be gone, time you spring out.

McRory pulls a hard left. Sends me flat on my bum shoulder, and I have to worm myself upright.

Me and you then, this is it?

It, this is.

So just let me out. I’ll walk.

McRory stops the car. Slams right on the brakes.

Okay, he says. Gets out. Opens my door. Gets back up front.

Cuffs? I say.

Hell no. Too easy.

Chi-Chi’s got cutters.

Good for Chi-Chi, he says.

I step out. The street is dead. McRory flips the radio on and the stripes come through. Still 9-9, bottom of the thirteenth.

So, just like that? I say.

Just like what?

You letting me walk?

Soon as you get in my headlights, I’m running your ass over, he says. I’m gonna floor it.

Bullshit, I say. We got too much history.

We do got that.

And here’s what we come down to: me cuffed, shuffling down the street, McRory with his roller in neutral, door open and his foot pedaling the pavement like Fred Flintstone. Me almost fifty, headed for another stretch. Him almost sixty, headed for the big one. Both of us eyes ahead and ears on the Yanks going into fourteen, knowing this one can’t play on forever.