“Well?” the commander inquired.
“He did it. I don’t think he liked it much, but he did it, right
in front of his dad’s buddy. We picked up a guy there, Eddie Sanderson. Small time burglar a ways back. He might have something. I figure we’ll let him sit a couple of hours, then let him out to see what he can turn up. He’s plenty scared, boss.”
“A little bonus there, good. Keep Brogan working hard, show him the ropes. If you think we can trust him after a couple of weeks, we’ll use him.”
CHAPTER 26
THE EAST SIDE, 1950
Johnny had the glass top off, one of the bumpers replaced and the rubber bands back on, but couldn’t get the pinball machine bumper to respond. “Shit,” he muttered, thinking he was going to have to find the broken connection and solder it. There were about seven people at the bar, and five of them were watching him at the table as he tried to get the pinball to work. Every minute he took to fix the damn thing was costing him money.
Johnny stopped, lit a cigarette, and took a moment to regroup. “I’ll have it goin’ pronto, guys, don’t worry,” he assured the players.
One of the two guys not watching him was an old fella looking out the window, and the other was a big guy with a beard, talking to the bartender in a foreign accent. The bartender kept wiping down glasses, saying, “Uh, huh,” every so often while the foreign guy emphasized his points by jabbing his finger on the bar.
Hmm, Johnny thought, sounds kind of like a Polish accent, but it’s not. Russian, maybe. Then, taking a deep drag of his cigarette, he flicked the ashes into the ashtray, tucked the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, where the smoke wouldn’t drift into his eyes, and went back to work, looking for the short with his voltmeter.
The bartender picked up the tray of glasses, said a final “Uh, huh” to the foreigner, and walked down the bar to put them away. His audience lost, the bearded man turned towards the old fella at the window, but found himself looking at his back. Spinning on his stool, he looked down the bar and saw everyone else watching Johnny work on the pinball machine. Getting up, he put his hands in his pockets and walked the length of the bar, looking down at Johnny and smiling.
Oh, no, thought Johnny, another know-it-all sidewalk supervisor.
“American electronics are the second best in the world,” the big man said, raising his index finger.
“I suppose they make it better in Moscow there, eh, Ivan?”
The beard shook firmly in disagreement. “No. Certainly not. The Russians make garbage. But the Germans, now, they make the best . . .”
“Hey,” Johnny said to the bar, “Am I mistaken or didn’t we just kick the Nazis’ ass?”
Nods of assent and muttered confirmations came from the bar.
Looking up at the big man, Johnny continued, “Now, you’re gonna tell me how to find the short in this machine, right, Ivan?”
The big man removed his glasses and leaned over to peer closely at the opened pinball machine. “Hmmm, this is very interesting,” he said, looking it over. “I would check there first,” pointing where the wires were attached to the thumper bumper coil where Johnny was about to apply the tester’s prong.
He did, and it was bad. Taking out the iron and a roll of solder, Johnny put a couple of drops on the end of the iron when it got hot, then put more on the wires, fusing it to the coil. That got the bumper working again, and the big guy was practically dancing with joy.
“Whaddya, playing pocket pool, there, Ivan?” Johnny said, sliding the glass into place and watching the foreigner bounce on his toes with his hands in his pockets.
“I know about electricity and machines,” he replied, then spreading his hands out wide, “I can fix radios. Sometimes I even fix Mr. Ciminelli’s jukebox here.”
Johnny looked over at the bartender, who shrugged and nodded. “Yeah, one time it broke, we couldn’t find you, so Mickey gave him the keys. He opened it up and had it runnin’ in no time,” the bartender said.
“Huh,” Johnny said. “Where’d you learn all this, Ivan?”
In a low voice, he replied, “In the army.”
“Whose army? Joe Stalin’s?”
Quieter still, “Yes, 138th Signal Battalion. I was a radioman. The Russian radios were shit, and I had to fix them every day.”
Looking him up and down, Johnny said, “Well, ain’t that somethin’, Ivan.”
“My name, sir, is not Ivan. It is Stepan Mikhailovitch Tovsenko. My family is from near Kharkov, in the Ukraine, not Russia.”
The mention of the Ukraine immediately made Johnny think of a Ukie girl named Luba, from a high school dance at Burgard. Long, dark hair, body like Venus, and wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.
“So, anyhoo, Ukie, how’d you like to learn how to do this repair work for me?” Johnny said. He plugged in the pinball machine and the players started getting off their bar stools and pulling out their nickels.
CHAPTER 27
NORTH PARK, 1950
Tim was lying in bed and had turned off the Lone Ranger radio that sounded so loud in the dark, no matter how low he turned it. He had owned the little red box since childhood and kept the wire antenna strung up to the curtain rod, so he could pick up stations from Rochester and sometimes even Syracuse.
Not sleepy, he watched the shadows of the tree branches swaying on the ceiling in the breeze. When the wind blew harder, the leaves would shake and their images danced to and fro. The windows were open, and he could hear the leaves rustle. The cicadas buzzed like a high-pitched saw in the summer heat, and the crickets chirped constantly until threatened by the approach of a bird or a cat. Sometimes a bug would bang up against the screens.
Pat was snoring, a sure sign he’d been drinking. Dad was across the hall in his and Mom’s room and always closed the thick wooden door when he went to bed. Pat stopped snoring after awhile and started mumbling. Nightmares again. Tim didn’t like that. Whenever he’d drink a lot, Pat snored, then tossed and turned, then started talking in his sleep. After just a few moments, he’d jump up with a cry of surprise, sit there for a minute or two, then, go to the bathroom, piss, and wash his face. Sometimes he’d do that two or three times a night.
Tim remembered Pat belting Bobby May and chasing the other bad kids away on the playground at 81 when they’d kicked Timmy and his friends away from the wall, where they were playing strikeout. Pat had been in the Army and fought at the Battle of the Bulge against the Nazis. It disturbed Tim to know Pat could be frightened, and he pulled the covers up and ducked his head under the pillow.
Pat was jolted awake by the dream and found himself sweaty, thirsty, and out of breath. Looking at the luminous, round dial of the ticking Westclox alarm clock, he saw he’d been in bed only twenty minutes. How did it happen so fast? he wondered. What was the dream this time? Father Kessler again, pacing the wooden floors with his hands clasped behind his back, calling me “squire,” a term he used for guys he thought were spoiled and rich:
“So, Squire Brogan, you were skylarking on a simple assignment the Sergeant gave you?” He spun suddenly on his heel and was now staring at Pat, who wanted to crawl under the desk. “‘Skylarking’ is the proper term in the military, is it not, Brogan?” he said, raising his voice to assure attention.
“Yes, Father.”
“You were given some easy responsibilities? Keeping an eye on some young soldiers, taking prisoners back to the rear?”
How did he know all this, how did they always know?
“You even saw Captain, later Colonel, Urban go by, returning to the front lines,