In Malley’s that night I became a celebrity. Everybody had to come up and look me over. There was a couple in square-dancing clothes and a couple in polka clothes and a couple in evening clothes of the sort Lawrence Welk probably had wet dreams about. There were racists—”You can bet they was fuckin’ niggers”; philosophers—”Hey, man, you’re alive, thank God for that”; vigilantes—”I say we get goddamn grenade launchers and go after those sonsabitches.” There were ladies who wanted to commiserate—”Malley tells me your old lady dumped you, huh? I ain’t doin’ nothin’ tonight”; and ladies who didn’t seem to want much of anything at all—”My ex-husband, he spilled his motorcycle, he hurt his head just like that, yeah.”
That was how I spent the next four hours of my somewhat dubious life, propped up in a corner under a TV set while ESPN reran an Ali fight from 1971 and the announcers had to pretend to get excited all over again.
Every few minutes Malley came by and said, “I still think I should call the cops.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I’m all right. I don’t feel like sitting in a station and filling out forms.”
He alternated between wanting to call the cops and wanting to call an ambulance. According to him, he knew the signs of concussion, so several times he shined this searchlight-size flashlight into my face and started mumbling doctor-like things to himself. The square dancers and the polka folks and the evening-outers all crowded around and kibitzed on my condition.
He was halfway through his fourth such number with me when the phone rang and he had to reluctantly put down the light to answer it.
He shoved a finger in an ear so he could hear and then surprise parted his lips and he pushed the phone at me.
“It’s for you,” he said.
Moving still hurt so I took my time. Right after waking up in Malley’s alley, I’d figured the mugging for a coincidence. Then slowly, as my senses returned, I knew better. By now I was half expecting this call.
I took it. Put my own finger in my own ear. Dolly Parton was singing now.
“Yes,” I said.
“You got a hard head, meester.”
“Yeah. I must.”
“We went easy this time. Next time—no.”
“Mind telling me what you’ve got against me?”
By now Malley had caught the drift of the conversation. He made a theatrical gesture to a guy behind the bar who himself made a theatrical gesture out of picking up a double-barreled shotgun and handing it to Malley.
“You tell that cocksucker to come over here,” Malley said. Malley’s face looked like somebody who’d gone crazy in a panel of a Sergeant Rock comic book. All he needed was a stubby cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth.
“You lay off the investigation you got going, man,” the voice on the phone was saying. “Otherwise we’re going to lay on the hands again. A lot harder. You dig me?”
He was doing a bad imitation of a juvenile delinquent in an old Glenn Ford movie. At least he hadn’t called me “chickie baby.”
I handed the phone to Malley.
Before the poor bastard on the other end hung up Malley had insulted the guy’s father, mother, sister, brother, and dog.
“Here,” Malley said after slamming the phone.
He presented me with the shotgun as if he were a king sending his most trusted knight into battle.
I thanked him but declined the offer. The police department probably wouldn’t be too happy to see me riding around with a shotgun in my car. They just don’t have the sense of humor most normal people do.
This time when I got outside all that was waiting for me was the realization that I was totally alone. A veritable hunchback of self-pity.