Chapter 40

Monday morning was complete disaster.

The alarm shattered what was left of my nerves. I launched a left hook at it and watched it bang into the wallpaper leaving a mark that would require some tender loving care. I didn’t know what I should do first, shower or shave. The decision was too much for my almost zombie-like state of directionless thought.

I gave up and brewed a pot of coffee in automatic mode and allowed my brain go into pilotless control wishing that same ploy would work for everything else I had to face that day.

The refrigerator was a mess of outdated milk and left-overs from only God knew when. I pulled out an uncut loaf of bread and sawed off two sloppy slices of Jewish rye and cooked them up under the broiler in the stove because there was no way the things could fit into the toaster that required neat slices cut with a lot more precision.

I opened the front door.

No fucking newspaper.

I wanted to scream out...”Typical!”

Then the memory kicked in and I had to sit down for a moment and let my tears flow in private because everybody knows real men don’t cry.

Today was the funeral.

Today was the day I would bury my beloved Julie. I knew what was in the coffin. It was the bits and pieces of what had been a beautiful young woman in the prime of her life. My young bride had been wiped off the game-board of life by a bomb meant specifically for me.

Certainly, no assassin was hired to eliminate the love of my life.

It was just bad luck that had Julie decide to go to the store using my car instead of her old piece of junk that was back again in the shop getting repairs before putting it on the road.

That was only five days ago but it was like an eternity of sadness sitting hard on my shoulders like the weight of the entire world. I had sent the baby and nanny Consuela with her small daughter upstate to live with my cousins coming to the rescue like they had several times before.

It had been only two weeks since my Uncle Joe was eliminated by a similar car bomb right as he was crossing over the Brooklyn Bridge with his driver and Malcolm taking notes about the pricks convicted in court in the “Dirty Cop” trial. There were a total of eleven defendants in the trial. I know that sounds like a lot of cops but the simple truth of the matter was that we were unable to charge most of the higher ranking cops because they had a combination of insulation from the day to day operations and a shit-pot of good lawyers that mounted an effective defense against the charges.

Uncle Joe decided to go with the eleven goons that had reams of evidence against them and come back later to indict the others another day. I suspect that was a mistake on his part because it allowed them to re-group and attack us with the car bombs which was a cowardly way to get rid of your enemy. The crime scene on the bridge was compromised from the very beginning because there was really no alternative route to cross the East River other than the Williamsburg bridge and that one was getting a makeover with most of the lanes shut down for the next two months. They gave short shrift to the forensic team and scooped up the remains of the car with occupants still inside and moved them down to the impound yard downtown for analysis.

We were just recovering from that debacle when I stood at my window and watched my wife blasted to kingdom come by a blast that threw the entire vehicle about twenty feet into the air. We all made the funeral and sent Joe off to the sound of the bagpipes and buried him out in Queens next to all our relatives that had immigrated to this county from the Emerald Isle.

Of course, all of the top brass were there and condolences were mostly sincere.

It took almost a week and a half for things to get back to normal and then we had the other side of the story with the blast that made me a widower with a small baby to look out for.

At least the baby and the nanny and her little girl were out of the frying pan and in the suburbs where crime was rare and mostly of the white collar kind that seldom used violence to achieve an end.

I finally got myself squared away and looked at my ugly mug in the mirror.

Good!

I had been successful at staying away from the booze except for a shot at my Uncle’s funeral when it was almost impossible to refuse as his final send-off.

My Julie’s funeral was more of a formal affair without the bagpipes or the tearful toasts that always cropped up at Irish funerals. Even her wayward sister showed up with the ring in her nose and the attitude that pissed me off with a single glance.

It was all choreographed perfectly and the thing was over in one hour and twenty minutes from start to finish. The short drive out to queens was not a hassle because we had a line of limos to take us there and back and it was primarily family and close friends.