Chapter One: Get him out of here.

 


 

The telephone rang as if from another time, that old-fashioned ring I forgot I had set for my cell phone.

 it seemed to connect with some dream my drinking had inspired. So, when I open my eyes to the dark, I forgot when and where I was.

The only light in the room came from that phone which I had left face up on the nightstand. This was just bright enough for me to make out the face of the old-fashioned clock management had furnished the room with.

It said 3:45.

And this was not in the afternoon.

But night or day, calls did not indicate good news.

I groped for the phone catching it just before it cycled into message mode.

“Yeah?” I mumbled into the screen, still unable to get used to the idea that it had no real mouthpiece.

“It’s Rocco,” a gruff voice said. “Are you sober?””

What kind of fucking crack is that?’ I asked, just awake enough to be angry.

“I need you sober and your ass down here,” Rocco said.

“Can’t it wait until morning?

“It is morning.”

“You know what the fuck I mean,” I said. “Don’t be a wise guy, I hate wise guys.”

“I got a friend of yours down here and I need you to get him out.”

“Friend? what friend?

“Your columnist friend.”

“You mean Nathaniel?” I said, forming a picture of the rotund middle-aged men in my mind, 60 years out of touch with the times, a Dashiell Hammond who had a vision of Hudson City that came out of post-World War II. He knew the city better than anyone I knew but always painted it in terms of old Italians Irish and Germans at a time when blacks and Latinos had taken over that turf.

Nat at Rocco’s motel surprised me, something totally out of character for a man who still went to church twice a week and to confession with a clear conscience.

“So, what do you need me for?” I asked.

“He is in no condition to go home.”

“So, call a cab.”

“You mean an ambulance or a hearse. He’s dead,” Rocco said. “Now get your ass down here. I don’t need the headlines about this.”

 

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