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Driving back towards the suburbs, I feel lighter than air. If all goes the way I planned it, Mark and his wife will soon be the number one suspects in the murders of the Perez brothers. A big part of me feels like calling Joanne with the good news, but she’s going to be busy with the house renovations and whatever plans she’s making with Sean for our new businesses. For sure, she’ll come down on me for not checking with her first before I went ahead with my plan to plant evidence that, God willing, will lead to Mark’s and his wife’s arrest.
She’ll just exhale heavily and suggest something like, what if Mark says he saw you snooping around the crime scene? The likenesses on the FBI Wanted poster look just like us, or so you told me. What happens if the police call you in for questioning and they record your voice and match it up with the voice belonging to the man who made the anonymous phone call from the Stop n’ Rob? What if Danish goes to said Stop n’ Rob and starts interviewing some of the customers, asking them if they spotted a mailman who matches your description making a phone call on the payphone? Something hardly anyone does anymore.
Okay, the hard questions and possibilities for disaster are now invading my brain like a swarm of ants that suddenly entered my ear canals. Now, I don’t feel so light anymore. Now I feel like my veins are filled with wet concrete. Is it really necessary to ruin the Little’s Lake caretaker’s life? I drive further on into North Albany. Soon I’ll have to show back up at the postal facility near the airport and pick up the afternoon’s load. I’ve already missed out on lunch, but I don’t feel much like eating anyway.
As if God or divine Providence is suddenly deciding to intervene in my newfound life of crime, I pass by the St. Pious Church. It’s the church Jo and I used to attend regularly when Brad Junior was young. Acting on instinct, I tap the brakes, slow the truck down. I come to a full stop. No one is behind me, so it’s not a problem. Throwing the truck in reverse, I come to another stop at the church’s parking lot entry. I drive into the lot and park the truck in one of the many empty spaces.
Killing the engine, I get out and shut the sliding door. I’m not sure why I’m doing this, or if I even need to do this, but there’s a voice inside my head...who knows, maybe it’s God’s voice...that’s telling me it’s imperative I do what I’m about to do. I pull open the big wood door, and I’m hit immediately with the smell of burning incense and candle wax. It’s a smell that brings me back to when I was an altar boy so many decades ago, when I had my entire life ahead of me. It seems like only yesterday I was seated up on the altar of my childhood church, directly beside my then best friend, a red-headed, freckled boy by the name of Patrick. It was inevitable we’d both get laughing at some point and that would always lead to a dirty look from the old priest we were supposed to be serving.
But that was then, and this is now, and I don’t feel much like laughing. I head further into the church, my eyes planted on the giant crucified Jesus hanging on the wall over the altar. He died on behalf of sinners like me, and having not stepped inside a church in ages, I feel the guilt wash over me. Catholic guilt. The guilt tells me I still believe in God and that one day, when I breathe my last, I just might be expected to pay for my sins.
I slip into a pew, drop to my knees on the kneeler, make the sign of the cross. I proceed to whisper an Our Father, which sort of becomes jumbled with a Hail Mary. But at least it’s a prayer and at least I’m trying. When I’m done with my prayer, I give Jesus one more good look.
“Listen, Jesus,” I say, “I sure hope you’ll forgive me and my wife for what we’ve done and what we’re about to do with the money, the drugs, and the caretaker and his wife. Life is hard these days, and this is our chance to make a real difference. We won’t have to struggle anymore. We can help our son live a better life. Is that too much to ask?”
Staring into the wood face, I wait for an answer. But of course, I’m not going to get one. And maybe that’s a good thing. Suddenly, I feel an injection of anxiety shoot through my veins. I no longer feel so guilty. If anything, I feel like by confessing my sins and asking God to forgive me ahead of time, I’ve been issued a special dispensation by God himself. I know that’s not the truth, but that’s what it feels like.
Time to go.
Standing, I slip out of the pew, speed-walk back down the aisle, and fly out the wood door. Getting back in my truck, I fire it up, and pull out of the lot onto the main road. It’s time to go back to work. All goes well, I’ll be retiring in a matter of weeks.
The New Karner Road Postal Office is more than just your run of the mill post office. It’s more like a warehouse that serves as a major distribution center for all the packages and mail that arrives from all over the country and the world. It’s big and noisy with conveyor belts and other machinery filling the giant space. Naturally, the average Joe and Jane can mail a letter here in a smaller space that’s open to the public. After backing the mail truck up to the docks, I enter the loud facility, go around the massive, roller-coaster like, metal conveyor belt system, and enter the general Post Office. That’s when I once more see my face. Mine and Joanne’s, that is. It’s precisely why I chose to enter the Post Office via the back door.
The FBI Wanted poster is tacked to the big bulletin board that also has maybe two dozen separate posters tacked to it, all of them containing the likenesses of the FBI’s Most Wanted felons and killers. My gut reaction is to reach out for the poster and yank it off the board. But I can’t do that since a small group of uniformed postal workers have gathered behind the package checkout counter. It’s a gathering of three men and one woman. She’s an attractive blonde woman about my age who’s always been nice to me. The guys are a lot younger, and I only know them in passing. They sometimes refer to me as “the old man” behind my back, but that’s never really bothered me. Okay, yeah, it bothers me, but what am I going to do about it?
When they see me head through the doors, my stacked empty mail bins in hand, they immediately end their conversation and on cue, shoot me a wide-eyed look. I stop in my tracks and return their gaze.
“Hi guys,” I say. “Something wrong?”
I’m playing dumb but I know precisely what’s on their minds. They see my face in the FBI Wanted poster. That’s when I remember something. Shifting my eyes downwards towards the topmost empty bin, I spot all the posters I ripped off the walls of the Dutch Village apartment building vestibules. I should have stopped somewhere and tossed them away. Maybe I should have driven around the back of the Stop n’Rob and dumped them in the dumpster. Or maybe I should have driven down to the Hudson River, found a secluded place along the bank and torched them. Whatever the case, I most definitely should not have brought them inside the Postal Distribution Center with me.
Positioning the bins so they can’t get a look inside the one stacked on top, I continue to smile like I haven’t a care in the world. Blonde Postal Worker works up a kind grin like she always does when she sees me. Her name is Carol, and she’s a grandmother of two. She’s the kind of grandmother who has pictures of the two little kids Scotch Taped to the wall beside the cash register she usually operates so that she has something to talk about with the customers who frequent the joint on an almost daily basis.
“We were just talking about how much the man depicted in the brand new Wanted poster looks like you, Bradley,” she says.
I give her credit for being honest. Now the other young guys smile as though they’re relieved the nasty cat is out of the bag.
“Yeah, Brad,” one of the men says. He’s the shorter of the three. “Whaddaya been doing on your free time? Killing gangsters?”
The others laugh. But Carol scolds them.
“Now, now, guys,” she says, “we all know Brad and his wife lead your average boring life, don’t we? Not only would he never hurt a fly, Brad, is not exactly the type to confront a gangster, are you, Brad?” She giggles a little. “I’ve never thought of you as the rough and tumble fighting type.”
“Yeah Brad, what are you benching these days? Twelve fluid ounces?” another one of the three young men says. That causes all the guys to burst out in laughter.
“You need help with those bins?” the short man says. “You gotta be careful you don’t strain yourself, Brad man.”
He comes around the counter, and with his arms outstretched goes to grab my bins. It’s something I can’t allow. If he takes the bins from me, he’ll see all the posters I ripped off the walls. Here’s what I do. About-facing, I drop the bins to the floor. Then, I quickly reshuffle them so that one containing the Wanted posters is now on the bottom. I pick them back up and face the short guy who’s still holding out his arms, like he wants to help out the old man.
“Come on, Brad,” he says. “Least I can do. Isn’t it your nap time anyway?”
The other guys are laughing so hard, tears are running down their cheeks. At the same time, I’m feeling a slow burn inside my veins.
“Very funny, guys,” I say. “But I’m still perfectly capable of performing my duties. And I got news for yahs. I’m not that old.”
I make my way past the counter towards the opposite wall and the swinging double doors that lead into the distribution center. I’m just about to head through them when I hear, “Bet that’s not what his wife says. You can’t tell me the old man is still getting it up.” The quip is almost followed by more laughter, and yet another scolding from Carol. “Now Martin, stop that,” she insists. “Brad might be getting on in years, but that’s no reason to insult his manly prowess when it comes to his marital responsibilities.”
Something happens to me then. The slow burn in my veins is replaced with a kind of rage. It’s like something I’ve never felt before. Suddenly, at my age, I feel like I’m back on the schoolyard and a pack of bullies is ripping me to shreds. Pushing through the swinging doors, I set the bins down on the concrete floor. Then, turning back around, I march right back through the doors.
I make my way around the counter to the three men and Carol. That’s when I do something I have never done before in my life. Grabbing hold of Short-Man-slash-Martin by the head of his hair, I stomp on his foot and, making a fist with my free hand, wallop him in the gut and nail him with a quick left hook on the temple. He goes down like a too heavy mail sack.
For a long beat, everyone stands there stunned. They are wide-eyed, their jaws having dropped to their ankles. As for me, I’m breathing heavily, my pulse pumping and pumping. What the hell did I just do? Carol was right. I was never the type to get into fights, never the type to confront the big bully, but instead, walk around him and hope he didn’t pick me out of the crowd for a tongue lashing or worse, a wedgie.
Bending at the knees, I hold out my hand for Martin. But he just looks up at me like I’m a monster and shoves my hand away.
“You hurt?” I ask.
“I can get up all on my own, if you don’t mind,” he spits.
But that’s when his buddies pitch in, grab him by both arms, and help him back up onto his feet.
“Maybe we should call the police,” one of them says. “That was assault and battery.”
“We are not going to call the police,” Martin insists. “And we’re not going to tell the boss either. What am I supposed to do? Admit I got beat up by an out of shape, old guy?” He sighs. “Anyway, I guess I sort of had it coming.”
Martin runs his fingers through his thick hair to straighten it out. I hold out my hand for him once more, this time as a peace offering. He looks at the hand, takes it in his, apprehensively.
“No hard feelings,” I say, squeezing his hand.
“Yeah,” he says, smirking. “I gotta say, I never knew you had it in you, Old...” He catches himself. “Mr. Jones,” he says.
“Neither did I,” I say.
“Come on, boys,” Martin says. “I need a cigarette.”
The three young men make their way around the counter, head through the swinging doors into the distribution center. I find myself alone with Carol. Almost unconsciously, I’m rubbing the knuckles on my left hand. They’re a little sore from colliding with Martin’s thick head.
To my utter surprise, Carol offers me a smile. It’s a smile that’s different from her everyday smile. Dare I say it, the smile contains a little sex appeal.
“You know, Brad, Martin truly could report you to the Postmaster for that,” she says. “But if I know him like I think I know him, he won’t say a word. He’s too proud for that. You’re almost twice his age and you kicked his ass, Bradley. Good for you...killer.”
“What about the others?” I say. “I gotta be honest, I don’t even know their names. To me they’re kids just starting out, like we were thirty years ago.”
“They listen to Martin. He’s a little Mussolini you ask me. He doesn’t want them to say anything, they won’t say anything.” She gently places her hand on my shoulder, gives it a nice little squeeze. “My guess is they will never give you grief again, Brad. Certainly, they won’t refer to you as the Old Man behind your back anymore.” She makes air quotes with her fingers when she says, Old Man. “I never knew you were such a tough guy under that soft gentlemanly appearance. A real killer.”
Yeah, who the hell knew, I want to say.
Instead, I smile, and feel her hand gently pinching my shoulder. For a second or two, I swear she’s about to lean in for a kiss. For years I’ve just been mild mannered Brad Jones to her. The guy who does his job without complaint; the guy who’s been a postal worker forever; the guy who doesn’t say a whole lot and who blends in with the shadows. But now I’ve become John freaking Wayne, and she likes it. It’s as if I’m a brand-new man to her.
My eyes drift to the photos of her grandkids taped to the wall.
“So how are the little ones, Carol?” I ask, like now’s the time for small talk.
She blinks and removes her hand from my shoulder. Her smile disappears. It’s like she’s just been woken up from a trance and now it’s back to reality. She glances at the pictures for a long moment.
“Oh, you know, getting big,” she sighs, “while we keep getting older.”
The entry door opens and a man in a business suit enters. He’s carrying a big cardboard box that he obviously wants to ship somewhere. That’s my cue to step back around the counter.
“Well, back to work,” I say.
“See you later, Bradley,” Carol says. “Maybe one day before we retire, we can get a drink after work.”
Holy crap, is Carol asking me, a thirty-three-year married man out on a date?
“Sure thing,” I say. “I’d like that. Before we retire.”
She turns to the businessman as he sets the box onto the counter.
“Can I help you, sir?” she says.
I disappear back through the swinging doors to retrieve my empty bins. For certain, a sea change has occurred this morning. I am no longer than man I used to be even ten minutes ago. It’s as though along with the deaths of the Perez brothers, the real Bradley “Killer” Jones has been born.