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THE LAMENTED
When the man he’d killed a year ago walked into the bar, Joe Dogan was surprised. So surprised that he fell off his stool.
Dogan lay on his back on the sticky floor, his eyes as rounded as the moon, and mouthed words silently. His glass rolled away from him, trailing bourbon.
Brad Acton, dead a year now, smiled, showing his fine teeth. Brad’s well-cut suit fit just right on his trim, tall body, and his well-cut blond hair flopped just right down his noble forehead. Brad seemed delighted to be here, even though this had to be the seediest bar in Camden, New Jersey, arguably the nation’s seediest city. When he was alive, he had been perpetually delighted, and everyone was delighted by him.
With a smile as bright as the day outside, Brad took a step toward where Dogan lay sprawled.
Dogan managed to make a sound: “Noooooooooooo.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. It must be the booze. A few times before, after tipping too many wet ones, he’d had hallucinations.
Slowly, warily, Dogan opened his eyes. The bar was empty again. The light from the revolving beer sign was the brightest thing in this dark place. It twinkled off the treasury of neatly shelved booze bottles. The afternoon shined beneath the door. The bartender-
Wobbling, Dogan climbed to his feet. He steadied himself with a good, strong grip on the edge of the bar. “I need a drink,” he bellowed.
Where the hell was the bartender? The little weenie had diligently poured his drinks without complaint, even when Dogan drove the two other customers out, threatening to kill them if they didn’t stop yapping about politics.
His.45 lay on the bar. Dogan hefted the gun and admired it in the light from the revolving beer sign. Nice, powerful weapon.
Oh, yeah. The bartender left after Dogan had waved the.45 in his face. Dogan remembered now. Couldn’t the jackass tell that Dogan was only kidding around?
“That’s the gun you killed me with.”
Dogan gulped painfully, as if he were swallowing an entire lemon down his suddenly parched throat. He turned around with elaborate, jaw-clenched care.
“It’s in better shape than you are,” Brad said, pleasantly enough. He stood a mere two feet from Joe. The breezy, confident way Brad acted-this could have been another election campaign stop for him.
Dogan tried to say, “You can’t be here.” Instead, it came out as: “Yaaaacunbur.”
“Why not?” Brad said. “It was a year ago tonight.”
Dogan was breathing at a marathoner’s tempo. He could hear his heart slamming wildly inside his rib cage, as though it wanted to escape.
“Joe, Joe, Joe. What am I going to do with you? That no-show county job that Robert Stagg arranged for you isn’t doing wonders for your character. Drinking in the middle of the day? Your job is supposed to be on the roads. Hard work, but honest work.”
“I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I…”
Brad’s smile grew still more incandescent. “Robert and you and I really must get together. Tonight makes sense. How’s tonight for you?”
He reached out to shake Joe’s hand. Like any masterful politician, Brad was a skillful and eager shaker of hands.
Dogan screamed and backpedaled in panic. He knocked over several barstools and fell hard on his butt. He lost his hold on the gun. It went spi
“Robert Stagg only paid you ten thousand to kill me,” Brad said. “I’m worth a lot more than that. Ten thousand? Chicken feed. Too bad the Justice Department is going to bag him. And on a corruption charge, not for my murder. How is that justice?”
Dogan stopped crawling when his head hit the jukebox. Fortunately for him, drink dulled the pain. The collision jolted the juke to life. It played an old Michael Jackson tune, the one with Vincent Price. He slumped against the machine, staring at the fading tattoo that decorated his thick forearm: a heart pierced with an arrow.
Fearfully, Dogan raised his gaze. He brought his fingers, sticky from the filthy floor, to his stubbly cheeks.
Skanky’s Tavern was empty once more.
Dogan clasped the jukebox to get up. He moved unsteadily, whether from the shock or from the bourbon, to the bar. En route, he successfully stooped to collect his.45 from the floor. He knew he had to leave before Brad appeared again. But first-
Dogan trudged behind the bar and hoisted the bourbon bottle. He glugged down torrents of the blessed stuff, burning his gullet and soothing his nerves. The bottle emptied, Dogan threw it against the wall. It shattered satisfyingly.
Checking around for Brad, Dogan stalked-actually weaved-out of Skanky’s. He shoved the.45 into the pocket of his ratty jacket. The early spring sun assaulted his retinas. He stumbled as the pink, purple and green circles swirled. Then they disappeared, and he could see again. With his head tilted back, the first thing he saw was the soaring mass of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge over the wrecked rooftops.
His chin fell to his chest. Two small kids, maybe around nine or ten, were messing with his motorcycle. One had the stones to sit on it, his pipe-stem arms extending to the handlebars. “Vroom, vroom,” he cried with joy as he twisted the throttle in imaginary acceleration.
Dogan pulled out the keys to his Harley, but dropped them on the stained sidewalk. “Get off my damn bike, you little bastards,” he roared at them. Then he slowly reached down for the keys, taking care not to fall over.
“You drunk as a monkey,” shouted the one sitting on the bike. Both kids tittered.
The keys retrieved, Dogan drew himself upright. He didn’t like kids. He didn’t like blacks. The truth was he didn’t like anybody. And he double-disliked anybody messing with his bike. Even Christ himself had no business messing with Joe’s bike. And Christ hadn’t been to Camden in a long while.
Dogan struggled the gun out of his jacket pocket. The sight was caught in some fabric. He ripped it free.
“White man’s packing,” the kid on the bike cried out and he jumped off agilely. Laughing, the two of them ran away.
Stewed as he was, Dogan realized he shouldn’t be brandishing his weapon on the street. Not for fear of cops, who were as scarce as a brontosaurus in the fossilized ruins of Camden. This neighborhood, Dogan knew, was Mister Man’s turf, called H Town, for heroin. To the north was Dope City and to the south was Crackville. But in this swath of Camden, Mister Man was the absolute ruler, his power akin to Kim Jong-Il’s. In H Town, no one pulled out a piece unless Mister Man okayed it. Mister Man had the monopoly on firepower here. Dogan stuffed his.45 back into his pocket and jerkily mounted his bike.
He kick-started the Harley Night Rod into life. In a flash of chrome, he sped his 7,000 r.p.m. screamer through the rutted roads of H Town, past the unending series of boarded-up, graffiti-marred row houses and stores, past the dry fire hydrants, past the dead streetlamps. He headed for Wilson Boulevard, where he could open her up. If a cop stopped him, he had the juice to skip away free. Robert Stagg would ensure that.
What Joe Dogan needed was wind through his hair. What he needed was to wipe out the daytime nightmare of Brad Acton, dead a year now.
The memorial ceremony for Brad Acton droned on ad nauseam. The marbled, colo