Buster Malloy skidded his ancient pickup truck to a halt outside the trailer, raising a cloud of dust and barely missing the neighbor’s dog. He slammed through the cheap aluminum screen door, almost knocking it off its hinges. Instantly awake, Helga Johanssen saw that there was anger in Buster’s eyes. Violence. And she was scared.
“What happened, Buster?” she asked nervously.
“I got shit on again,” he said bitterly. “An’ guess who done it to me.”
“I-I don’t know.”
“Some fuckin’ zipperhead in the baccarat pit. ’E’s yellin’ at the caller, see, so I go into the pit an’ ask ‘im real polite to calm down, an’ the goddamn slope t‘rows ’is drink in me face!”
“Jesus, Buster, you didn’t … get yourself fired?”
“Almost. I’m tellin’ you, I was ready to beat the shite outta the little bastard. But Al stopped me.”
“So … everything’s okay?”
“No, you dumb bitch, everything ain’t okay. I ‘ad to kiss some major ass to keep me job.” Malloy took off his shirt and lit up a Camel. “An’ then, jus’ to make me day perfect, I ’ad to take this card counter to jail.”
The blond woman looked at him questioningly, afraid to ask why that had upset him.
He slumped onto the couch and answered her unspoken question. “Poor little fucker was jus’ tryin’ to make a livin’, smart guy like ‘im, it ain’t right. They grind everybody into the fuckin’ ground like fuckin’ bugs.”
“Sorry, Buster. Sounds like you had a rough day. Let me make you something to eat—”
“Fuck that. Jus’ get me a beer.”
Malloy was utterly pissed off. Not just at the Galaxy and the little yellow scumbag who had thrown the drink at him but at the whole goddamn system—the system that kept a man down, the one he’d been at odds with for his entire life, the one that still treated a man like dirt at age fifty-four, when he should be getting a little respect at last. But no—that would be asking too much. Who gave a shit that you’d fought for your country for five years in ’Nam? Who cared that you’d lost your eye keeping their fat asses safe from fucking communism?
In the end it all came down to money. If you had it, you were king of the hill. If you didn’t, you were pond scum.
Helga’s voice, tremulous, interrupted his dark thoughts.
“There’s no more beer in the fridge, Buster.”
“Then gimme that bottle of Irish.”
She opened the cupboard door and extracted the whiskey bottle. “Do you want a glass?”
“No fuckin’ glass. I said, gimme that bottle.”
He half rose, threateningly. Disconcerted, she fumbled with the slippery bottle; it fell to the floor and smashed in a starburst of brown liquid and broken glass.
“Now look what you’ve done, you clumsy bitch,” he roared, leaping to his feet in a blind fury. Impulsively, he clenched his fist and punched her hard on the side of the head. She collapsed to the floor with a moan.
“Get up,” he hissed. “Get your butt over to the package store an’ buy me another bottle.”
She struggled to a sitting position. “O-okay, Buster. I’ll go. But I don’t have any money—”
He kicked her hard at the base of her spine. “Well, peddle your fuckin’ arse on the way over.”
With a cry of pain, she struggled to her feet but fell back against the chair. “Oh, Buster,” she said through gritted teeth, “I’m hurt—”
He leaned over and slapped her hard across the mouth. “Not as hurt as you’re gonna be if you don’t move it out—right now.”
“I-I can’t …”
Malloy seized her by the hair and dragged her bodily to her feet. “You lazy good-for-nothin’ whore,” he hissed. “Now I’m gonna show you who’s boss around ’ere.” He punched her again, hard in the jaw; her eyes rolled up and her body went limp. Only Buster Malloy’s grasp kept her in a semiupright position. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.
During the beating of Helga, Buster had become aroused. He shook her, gently at first, then more violently. There was no response. “Come on, you slut,” he growled. “Let’s get it on. Now you got me in the fuckin’ mood.”
It took several minutes for the big man to realize that she was dead. By the time this fact had registered, Buster Malloy was so horny that he was obliged to masturbate in the bathroom.
It was not the only murder he had committed in his lifetime.
The first had happened thirty-eight years ago.
Sean Malloy was a South Boston cop, a first-generation Irish immigrant. The big red-haired son of Erin was as mean as they came, a drinker, a wife beater, the latest link in a genetic chain of violence whose origin was shrouded in the mists of Hibernian history. Malloy was a walkin’ man in District Six, twirling his billy club like a baton of office five days a week from seven-thirty to four along the sidewalks of East and West Broadway and Dorchester Avenue.
Malloy rarely bothered to make an official arrest; for all but the most serious of crimes he generally administered his own brand of instant street justice, using his baton and his hamlike fists in the graffiti-smeared alleyways of Southie. It was a crude but effective deterrent to would-be transgressors, few of whom repeated their misdeeds on Sean Malloy’s beat.
Just as Malloy found no cause to allow the letter of the law to interfere with his application of the criminal code, he saw no reason to permit the job to constrain his drinking. Officer Sean Malloy’s morning routine seldom varied: a quick nip of Powers at the Silent Man to start the day, another at the Black Rose midmorning, and two or three glasses of Guinness at the Triple X for lunch.
“Hiya, Sean, how’s it goin’?” the pub keepers would inquire in a friendly and respectful manner as he slid his black-uniformed bulk onto a barstool.
“Ah, shite” was the invariable response. “It’s t‘irsty fookin ’ work.”
Afternoons followed the same pattern. An elbow bender at Finnegan’s, two or three more at the Legion, and a shift capper in the union hall before signing out for the day at the D Street station. Years of practice had taught him to project the illusion of sobriety at log-out time—you just walked straight and avoided breathing on anyone.
After exchanging his uniform for street clothes, Sean Malloy would embark upon the night’s serious drinking at Feeney O’Rourke’s Pub, his favorite, the only place he actually paid for his booze. By eight o ’clock he was pretty well lubricated; by ten-thirty he was mean drunk, and God help the man who crossed him.
O’Rourke’s Pub was conveniently located within five minutes of Malloy’s fiat, at the very corner where Dorchester Avenue divided Southie into east and west. Dorchester was a kind of reverse Berlin Wall, separating the established families in their comfortable Victorian town houses on East Broadway from their less-fortunate neighbors in grungy flats and walk-ups to the west. If the Irish were the dregs of Europe, then the new arrivals west of Dorchester were the dregs of South Boston. It habitually required a generation’s struggle to climb the hill to the more prosperous part of town.
The Malloys occupied a cheap but respectable five-room flat at West Fourth and E Street. Sean Malloy did not aspire to the heights of East Broadway. What more comfort did a man need? Compared with the slums of Dublin that had spawned him, the meanest quarter of Southie was a utopia.
All but one of Sean Malloy’s kids had fled the nest, scattered to the four corners of America, driven off by their father’s addiction to alcohol and his proclivity for violence. Only the youngest, a late addition to the brood, unplanned by his mother and unwanted by his father, remained under the Malloy roof.
Early on the morning of Buster Malloy’s twelfth birthday, he was roughly shaken awake by his father, Sean.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, the boy beheld a look on his father’s face that he had never seen before: panic, helplessness, a fearfulness that for some reason frightened Buster more than any of Sean’s violent rages ever could have.
“Wha … what is it, Da?” he cried, now wide-awake.
“It’s your ma, boy. Come quick. She’s sick.”
“Ma? Sick? What’ve you done to ’er?” He leapt from the bed and raced into his parents’ bedroom.
Maureen Malloy lay pale and sweaty, wrapped in a tangle of damp sheets. There was a fresh bruise on her cheek. Seeing her son enter the room, she struggled to raise her body to a sitting position but failed in the attempt, collapsing feebly back into the stained pillow.
Buster knelt by his mother’s bedside and clasped her worn left hand between both of his. Her fingers felt cold and clammy. Terrified, the boy croaked: “Ma, what’s the matter?”
“Oh, son,” she whispered. “It feels like there’s a great stone on me chest—”
“We’ll get help, Ma. You’re gonna be all right—”
“Give ’er this, boy,” said Sean, shakily pouring a hefty measure of Paddy’s Poteen into an unwashed glass. “Maybe she jus’ needs—”
Enraged, Buster knocked the drink out of his father’s hands. “What are ya tryin’ to do, you ol’ souse—finish ’er off?” He shouldered past his father, tears of rage and frustration welling in his eyes, and raced next door to Mrs. O’Shaughnessy’s.
Two hours later in St. Brigid’s Charity Hospital, his mother died. They said it was a massive coronary, she worked too hard, but Buster Malloy knew better. Sean Malloy was responsible—the years of beatings and verbal abuse had taken their toll, wearing her rag-thin, breaking her heart. He renewed his determination to get square someday with the stinkin’ drunken bastard who had killed his ma.
After the funeral, his father began to hit the bottle in earnest. When he left the Boston Police Department a few months later, they called it voluntary early retirement. But there were few secrets on West Fourth Street.
“The ol’ pisshead was lucky to get reduced pension,” Mrs. O’Shaughnessy confided to the milkman.
Sixteen-year-old Buster Malloy stalked out of Sister Immaculata Mary’s office with clenched fists. He was thoroughly pissed off. Whatfuckin’ business of hers was it that he’d beaten up Tommy Sullivan—off the school grounds? The little toe rag had been asking for a thrashing for weeks, and Buster had enjoyed applying it more than he cared to admit.
Not that he really minded being expelled from Gate of Paradise School; he’d been thinking of quitting anyway. But he resented having the choice forced on him.
He walked the five blocks to the dingy sixth-floor walk-up on Burrill he now shared with his father. They’d had to give up the flat on West Fourth to save money.
“What the hell you doin’ home at thish hour, boyo?” It was only eleven in the morning, but the old sod was already feeling no pain. He sat at the
kitchen table, reeking of Paddy’s Poteen. An unread copy of the South Boston Tribune served as a coaster for his whiskey bottle.
“I got kicked outta school,” the youth replied sullenly.
“You what?” the elder Malloy sputtered.
“I got kicked out. Expelled. They don’t want me back.”
“Why you little arsehole—I alwaysh said you was good for nothin’. It’sh time you learned a lesson. I’m gonna break yer fookin’ head right now.” His father lurched unsteadily from the kitchen chair. He was a big, heavy man, outweighing his son by a good five stone. But most of it had run to fat. Buster Malloy coldly calculated his chances.
“Keep away from me, you drunken old wanker,” he hissed angrily.
“You t’reatenin’ me, boyo?”
“Fuckin‘right. Touch me an ’ I’ll lay you out like a carp.”
The older man raised his beefy fist and aimed a blow at his son’s head. The boy ducked smoothly and landed a hard punch into his father’s blubbery belly. The ex-cop collapsed to the floor, gasping for breath. Surprised and thrilled at the ease with which he had felled the big man, Buster pressed his advantage, kicking his father in the kidneys as he lay doubled over in agony.
He kicked him again, harder this time. “That’s for bein’ a useless old tosspot … .”
Again, his nuts aching with the excitement of it. “That’s for all the bullshite I’ve ever taken from ye …”
Yet again, with all the force he could muster. “An’ that’s for drivin’ me ma to an early grave … .”
His father moaned and tried unsuccessfully to struggle to his feet. “God ’elp me, boy, I’ll kill you dead … .”
Buster Malloy laughed merrily. There was a pure sexual pleasure in the power he now wielded over this pathetic drunk. It wasn ’t just his father he was punishing anymore; he was hitting back at everything and everyone he hated—the kid who had squealed, the God Almighty holier-than-thou nuns, the whole rotten system.
“Kill me, then, will ya? How ya gonna do that, you old sack o’ shit? How ya gonna do that when it’s me that’s got the power?” Triumphantly, he picked up a heavy wooden chair, raised it high, and slammed it down full force on his father’s head.
Suddenly the kitchen was silent.
Blood trickled in a thin line from his father’s ear. There was a pronounced dent in his skull.
And Buster had a definite hard-on.
This felt good, way better even than torturing and killing neighborhood pets. It was amazing how focused, how together, he felt. His mind was incredibly clear; colors seemed brighter, objects appeared sharper. The act of inflicting pain had always turned Buster on. Killing was just a natural extension of this act: a higher high, an even more thrilling stimulant. That the victim was his own father bothered Buster Malloy not one whit—in fact, it intensified the sensation.
As a practical matter, he extracted the wallet from his father’s hip pocket and counted the bills. The old cheapskate only had nine bucks on him. Well, he sure as hell wouldn’t be needing it anymore.
It only remained to cover up what he’d done. Young Malloy thought for a moment, then smiled to himself. Grasping the dead weight of his father’s body under the armpits, he dragged it across the worn linoleum, down the hall to the rear fire escape.
The back of their building overlooked a dirty, garbage-filled alley. Peering over the railing, Buster noted with satisfaction that there was no one around. With a mighty heave, he hoisted Sean Malloy’s mortal remains onto the rusty railing as if he were hanging out an old mattress to air. The corpse’s feet trailed pigeon-toed upon the deck of the balcony; its arms swung limply in space beyond the railing. Malloy picked up the body by the ankles and, with a final effort, worked it outward until gravity took hold and it slid over the railing, temporarily disappearing from his view. He ran to the edge in time to observe it land headfirst with a satisfying splat next to a bundle of old newspapers, sending a large brown rat scurrying for safety.
He stopped to consider his next move. This had to look convincing. He returned to the kitchen and carefully wiped the blood from the floor and off the chair. Then he brought the chair out onto the fire escape, placing it in the corner where his father often sat on hot days. He returned in a moment with the half-empty whiskey bottle, holding it with his shirttail in order not to leave any fingerprints, and set it down beside the chair.
It was that easy. He’d tell the cops that the old fart had gotten drunk and fallen off the fire escape.
He went back inside, humming “Mack the Knife,” and dialed the operator.
Thirty-eight years later, the sensation was just as real, just as vivid. Buster Malloy hadn’t meant to snuff his girlfriend, but what was done was done. He buried her that same night.
Finally, Helga Johanssen’s piece of the American Dream was reduced to a few square feet of rough desert floor in Piute Valley.