Read Richard Montanari for Free Online Page A
Authors: The Echo Man
then I they tow it, then I
hadda go down to PPA and spend two hours standing around with a bunch of smelly
lowlifes. Then I hadda go down to Ninth and Filbert. Then they tell me I
owe three-hunna-ninety dollars in tickets. Three-hunna-ninety dollars.''
The man
slammed back his drink, washed it down with a mouthful of beer.
'Fuckin'
city. Fuckin' PPA. Buncha Nazis is what they are. Fuckin' racket.'
Detective
Kevin Byrne glanced at his watch. It was 11:45 p.m. His city was coming alive.
The guy next to him had come alive after his third Jim Beam. The man migrated
from tales of woe that began with his wife (fat and loud and lazy) to his two
sons (ditto on the lazy, no data on body type) to his car (a Prism not really
worth getting out of hock) and his ongoing war with the Philadelphia Parking
Authority. The PPA had few fans in the city. Without them, though, the city
would be chaos.
They
were sitting at the bar in a corner tavern in Kensington, a hole in the wall
called The Well. The place was half-full. Kool and the Gang were on the juke;
an ESPN wrap-up of the day's sports was on the television over the bar.
Byrne
slipped in the earbuds, blotting out the Parking Wars victim, looked at the
screen on his iPod, dialed down to his classic blues playlist. The jukebox in
the bar was now playing something by the Commodores, but here, inside Byrne's
head, it was 1957, and Muddy Waters was going down to Louisiana, saying
something about a mojo hand.
Byrne
nodded to the bartender, the bartender nodded back. Byrne had never been to
this tavern before, but the barkeep was a pro at what he did, as was Byrne.
Byrne
had grown up in Philadelphia, was a Two-Streeter for life, had seen the city's best
days and its worst. Well, maybe not its best. It was, after all, the place
where the Declaration of Independence had been signed, the place where the
Founding Fathers had gathered and hammered out the rules by which Americans, at
least to some small degree, still lived.
On
the other hand, the Phillies had won the World Series in 2008, and for a
Phillies fan that trumped some faded old document any day.
In
his time on the job Byrne had investigated thousands of crimes, worked hundreds
of homicides, had spent nearly half his life among the dead, the broken, the
forgotten.
What
was the Thomas de Quincy quote?
If
once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of
robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath- breaking, and
from that to incivility and procrastination .
Byrne
had his own word for it.
Slippage.
To
Kevin Byrne, slippage was about accepting levels of behavior that previous
generations would have considered unthinkable, standards that had slowly become
the norm, new lows from which the cycle could begin again, inching ever
downward.
Lately
he found himself thinking obsessively about all the innocent, the unavenged. He
thought about the short, inconsequential life of Kitty Jo Morris, aged three,
scalded to death by her mother's boyfriend, a man angered over the little
girl's habit of taking the remote from the living room; of Bonita Alvarez, not
quite eleven, who was pushed from the roof of a three-story building in North
Philly for hiding one of her older sister's Rice Krispie treats in the broom
closet; of Max Pearlman, aged eighteen months, left in a car overnight in
January while his father smoked crack underneath the Piatt Bridge.
No
headlines here. No NBC White Paper specials on the state of the American
family. Just a little less space in the graveyards. Just a little slip.
Now,
in Byrne's head, it was 1970. Blues legend Willie Dixon was proclaiming that he
ain't superstitious. Neither was Kevin Byrne. He had seen too much to believe
in anything but good and evil.
And
evil is in the house , Byrne thought as he considered the man
hadda go down to PPA and spend two hours standing around with a bunch of smelly
lowlifes. Then I hadda go down to Ninth and Filbert. Then they tell me I
owe three-hunna-ninety dollars in tickets. Three-hunna-ninety dollars.''
The man
slammed back his drink, washed it down with a mouthful of beer.
'Fuckin'
city. Fuckin' PPA. Buncha Nazis is what they are. Fuckin' racket.'
Detective
Kevin Byrne glanced at his watch. It was 11:45 p.m. His city was coming alive.
The guy next to him had come alive after his third Jim Beam. The man migrated
from tales of woe that began with his wife (fat and loud and lazy) to his two
sons (ditto on the lazy, no data on body type) to his car (a Prism not really
worth getting out of hock) and his ongoing war with the Philadelphia Parking
Authority. The PPA had few fans in the city. Without them, though, the city
would be chaos.
They
were sitting at the bar in a corner tavern in Kensington, a hole in the wall
called The Well. The place was half-full. Kool and the Gang were on the juke;
an ESPN wrap-up of the day's sports was on the television over the bar.
Byrne
slipped in the earbuds, blotting out the Parking Wars victim, looked at the
screen on his iPod, dialed down to his classic blues playlist. The jukebox in
the bar was now playing something by the Commodores, but here, inside Byrne's
head, it was 1957, and Muddy Waters was going down to Louisiana, saying
something about a mojo hand.
Byrne
nodded to the bartender, the bartender nodded back. Byrne had never been to
this tavern before, but the barkeep was a pro at what he did, as was Byrne.
Byrne
had grown up in Philadelphia, was a Two-Streeter for life, had seen the city's best
days and its worst. Well, maybe not its best. It was, after all, the place
where the Declaration of Independence had been signed, the place where the
Founding Fathers had gathered and hammered out the rules by which Americans, at
least to some small degree, still lived.
On
the other hand, the Phillies had won the World Series in 2008, and for a
Phillies fan that trumped some faded old document any day.
In
his time on the job Byrne had investigated thousands of crimes, worked hundreds
of homicides, had spent nearly half his life among the dead, the broken, the
forgotten.
What
was the Thomas de Quincy quote?
If
once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of
robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath- breaking, and
from that to incivility and procrastination .
Byrne
had his own word for it.
Slippage.
To
Kevin Byrne, slippage was about accepting levels of behavior that previous
generations would have considered unthinkable, standards that had slowly become
the norm, new lows from which the cycle could begin again, inching ever
downward.
Lately
he found himself thinking obsessively about all the innocent, the unavenged. He
thought about the short, inconsequential life of Kitty Jo Morris, aged three,
scalded to death by her mother's boyfriend, a man angered over the little
girl's habit of taking the remote from the living room; of Bonita Alvarez, not
quite eleven, who was pushed from the roof of a three-story building in North
Philly for hiding one of her older sister's Rice Krispie treats in the broom
closet; of Max Pearlman, aged eighteen months, left in a car overnight in
January while his father smoked crack underneath the Piatt Bridge.
No
headlines here. No NBC White Paper specials on the state of the American
family. Just a little less space in the graveyards. Just a little slip.
Now,
in Byrne's head, it was 1970. Blues legend Willie Dixon was proclaiming that he
ain't superstitious. Neither was Kevin Byrne. He had seen too much to believe
in anything but good and evil.
And
evil is in the house , Byrne thought as he considered the man