Tough Luck (11 page)

11

MICKEY PARKED ACROSS the street from his house and got out of his car slowly. The neighbors noticed him and stopped talking to the officers and to each other right away. Mickey’s landlord Joseph was there, and so was Shawn, the thirteen-year-old kid from next door, and Shawn’s parents, and John Finley and his wife Kathy, and Kenny Dugan from up the street. Then Mickey saw Mrs. Turner, Chris’s mother, standing off to the side by the driveway. Everyone was looking at Mickey with sad, disappointed expressions, probably wondering how a kid like Mickey, who’d always seemed like he’d had such a good head on his shoulders and was going to go places in life, had wound up getting involved in something like this.

The two officers saw Mickey and immediately stopped what they were doing and walked toward him, looking very serious, to head him off before he reached the house. Mickey expected to be thrown back against the car and handcuffed from behind and the officers to start reading him his rights.

“You Mickey Prada?” one of the officers asked. He was a stocky guy with a thick brown mustache.

“Yeah,” Mickey said, bracing himself.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news for you,” the officer said. “Your father was killed this afternoon.”

“What did you just say?” Mickey said.

“I said your father was killed this afternoon,” the officer said. “He was struck by a car while crossing Fort Hamilton Parkway. We’re very sorry.”

It seemed like a second later Mickey was sitting on his stoop, the two officers standing in front of him, and he had no idea how he got there. The other officer, who was tall with a short blond crew cut, was explaining how the accident had happened. Sal Prada had been trying to cross Fort Hamilton Parkway against the light at approximately three-thirty P.M. when a laundry truck slammed into him. Mickey was barely paying attention, but he heard the officer say “your father died instantly” and “he didn’t feel any pain.”

The neighbors came over to Mickey, one by one, trying to console him. Chris’s mother sat next to Mickey on the stoop and put an arm around him. Mickey could smell alcohol on her breath as she said, “Don’t worry, your father’s in heaven now and he’s not suffering anymore.” She kissed Mickey on the cheek and then said, “I know this is a terrible time for you, but do you got any idea where Chris is?”

Mickey looked at the officers standing nearby, only a few feet away. But the officers were busy, writing in their pads, and didn’t seem to be eavesdropping.

“What do you mean?” Mickey asked.

“He didn’t come home last night and I haven’t heard from him all day,” Mrs. Turner said. “I thought he might’ve gone to Atlantic City or something with you and maybe he didn’t tell me.”

“I haven’t seen him since last Thursday night,” Mickey said.

“I’m sure he’ll come home soon,” Mrs. Turner said. “And when he does I’ll tell him to come over and be with you.”

After a few minutes of consoling Mickey, Mrs. Turner returned to her house across the street. The police officer with the mustache gave Mickey some personal items that were found on Sal—his wallet and keys—and explained that the body was currently in the Victory Memorial Hospital morgue.

“If you want to come with us to ID the body, we’d be glad to give you a lift.”

Mickey nodded and followed the officers to the squad car. During the twenty-or-so-minute drive to Bay Ridge, Mickey stared out the window while the officers up front bullshitted about baseball.

At the hospital, Mickey was led down to the morgue. An attendant explained that the body was in “bad shape,” so instead of showing Mickey the actual body, he showed him a black-and-white photograph—a side view of Sal Prada’s face. Mickey recognized his father immediately and the attendant asked him to sign the picture.

Mickey was given a card with a number to call to give instructions on where to send the body, then the officers led Mickey back upstairs.

In the hospital’s lobby, the blond officer said to Mickey, “We understand that your father was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and had also recently suffered a stroke. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” Mickey said.

“Do you have any idea why he was in the Fort Hamilton Parkway vicinity today?” the officer asked.

“No,” Mickey said. “Not really. I mean this is the neighborhood where he grew up, Bay Ridge, and he sometimes got confused about the past.”

“We also understand this wasn’t the first time your father wandered away,” the officer said.

“No it wasn’t,” Mickey said.

“Excuse me for saying this, but if this happened before, why wasn’t your father receiving supervision?”

“You mean why wasn’t he in a home?” Mickey asked.

“Yes. Or why—”

“Because I didn’t want to put him in a home, all right? I wanted to take care of him. Would you put your father away in a nursing home?”

“I don’t know, but if I didn’t put him away I probably wouldn’t let him wander the streets, either.”

Mickey was about to tell the blond officer to go fuck himself when the officer with the mustache cut in and said to his partner, “I think we should get going now.”

They drove Mickey back to his house. Mickey got out of the car without saying anything, letting the door slam behind him.

All the commotion in front of the house had cleared, and Mickey went up to his apartment. He sat at the kitchen table, looking through Sal Prada’s old address book. Most of the names in the book were of old friends of his father’s who had died or whom his father had fallen out of touch with. But Mickey called all the people he thought would want to hear about his father’s death, including his father’s cousin Carmine on Staten Island. Carmine was in his eighties and couldn’t hear very well. Mickey had to keep yelling, “My father died!” until Carmine finally understood. “Oh,” Carmine said, not sounding very surprised or upset. Mickey explained how his father had died and Carmine said, “Oh, that’s too bad.”

Mickey called a few other distant relatives and old friends of his father and got similar reactions. No one seemed very surprised to hear that Sal Prada was dead, and they didn’t seem to care very much, either.

When he finished calling, Mickey went into his room and turned on the radio. He listened for an entire hour, lying in bed, but there was still nothing about a robbery or a murder in Manhattan Beach.

Downstairs, in his landlord’s apartment, Blackie was barking as loudly as usual; otherwise, the apartment was quiet and suddenly seemed very empty.

It was after eleven, but Mickey decided to call Rhonda, anyway. A woman answered the phone—it sounded like her stepmother—and Mickey asked to speak with Rhonda. About a minute went by and then Rhonda picked up.

“Rhonda, it’s Mickey.”

There was a long pause then she said, “Hi.”

“Sorry to call so late,” Mickey said.

“It’s okay,” she said. “So what do you want?”

“My father died today.”

Rhonda hesitated then said, “Are you serious? What happened?”

Mickey explained.

“My God, that’s so awful,” Rhonda said. “I’m so sorry.”

“So what’re you doing right now?” Mickey asked.

“Now?”

“Yeah. You feel like going to a diner and getting some dessert or coffee or something? I mean I know it’s short notice but I really want to see you again and—”

“I can’t now,” Rhonda said. “I mean it’s late and I have an early class tomorrow and—”

“Oh,” Mickey said, “because I really wanted to make up for today. I know I was an asshole.”

“I’m sorry,” Rhonda said. “I can’t.”

“It’s okay,” Mickey said. “We’ll do it some other time then.”

“Yeah, some other time,” Rhonda said. “I’m really sorry about your father.”

“Thanks,” Mickey said.

He wanted to say something else but Rhonda said, “Bye, Mickey,” and hung up quickly.

AT EIGHT THE next morning, Mickey called Harry at home and explained he would have to take the morning off.

“You better have a good reason,” Harry said.

“My father died,” Mickey said.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry,” Harry said, for once in his life sounding sincere. He asked Mickey how it happened and after Mickey told him he said, “You sure you don’t wanna take the whole day?”

“Nah, just the morning,” Mickey said. “I’ll see you at noon.”

Mickey spent most of the morning on the phone. He looked in the yellow pages for funeral homes and called a few that didn’t seem too expensive. But even the cheapest funeral would cost three thousand bucks, not including the price of the coffin, the hearse, or the cemetery plot. Mickey only had about nine hundred left in the bank and he still owed Artie over a thousand, so there was no way he could even afford a coffin.

Mickey decided to forget the funeral. He would just have a wake for his father and have the body cremated. He found a wake/cremation package for twenty-two hundred bucks at a funeral home on Avenue U. When Mickey explained his financial situation, the funeral director agreed to let him pay with an interest-free payment plan—two hundred bucks up front, and then payments of at least a hundred a month.

After Mickey called the morgue and arranged for the body to be delivered to the funeral home, he called a few of his father’s relatives and old friends and told them about the wake on Wednesday. He even called Artie, leaving a message with his wife, then he called up some of the neighbors who had been by the house yesterday. He called Chris’s mother last. She said she wanted to come, but she was too worried about Chris to think about anything else. Mickey said he understood.

“I haven’t seen him in two days now, and it’s just not like him not to call,” she said.

“Like I told you,” Mickey said, “I haven’t seen him since Thursday night.”

“He left to go out Saturday night,” Mrs. Turner said. “I heard the door slam, but he didn’t say where he was going. I was drinkin’ a little bit that night, so maybe he said something and I didn’t hear him.”

“I’m sure he’s all right,” Mickey said.

“If I don’t hear something by noon, I’m calling the police,” Mrs. Turner said. “This just isn’t like Chris.”

When Mickey got off the phone he was sweating all over. He showered and dressed for work, leaving his apartment at a quarter to twelve. At the grocery store on Avenue J, he bought a copy of the
Daily News
and flipped through it as he walked, but there was nothing about the robbery.

At work, five or six customers were on line, waiting to order from Harry and Charlie.

“Hey, Mickey,” Charlie said, stopping what he was doing. “I heard about your father. Man, I’m really sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Mickey said.

“If there’s anything I can do, you just lemme know and I’ll be there for you, all right?”

“Yeah,” Mickey said.

Mickey went to the back of the store and immediately bent over the sink and splashed his face with cold water. Then he put on his apron and returned to the front of the store. Around one, the lunch crowd thinned out and Harry left for the afternoon.

“Thank
God,
” Charlie said to Mickey when the door closed behind Harry. “Being trapped here with that asshole all morning was like being in hell. You shoulda seen him— runnin’ me around, givin’ me orders. I’m busy cutting a piece of salmon for this one lady when he tells me to take this guy’s order. I say to him, ‘I only got two hands,’ and he goes, ‘Talk back to me again like that and you’re fired.’ Said it right there, right in front of everybody. Swear to God, I almost quit on his ass right then. Shoulda done it too— worth it not to see his fat, wrinkly-ass face no more.”

“You get AM stations on that?” Mickey said, motioning with his chin toward Charlie’s boom box in the corner.

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “What you lookin’ for, sports scores?”

“Yeah,” Mickey lied. “You mind?”

“Go ahead.”

Mickey turned on the boom box and started searching for a news station.

“So Harry told me some about what happened,” Charlie said. “Your father had Alzheimer’s, huh?”

“How’d you know?” Mickey asked. He had never talked to Charlie about his father.

“Harry told me,” Charlie said.

“Oh,” Mickey said, finding the station he’d been looking for.

“Yeah, my old man died when I was ten,” Charlie said. “Heart attack.”

“Sorry,” Mickey said, distracted by a story on the news, but it was about a murder in the Bronx, not Brooklyn.

“So you gotta let me know when the funeral is, and I’ll be there,” Charlie said.

“There won’t be a funeral, just a wake,” Mickey said.

“Whatever,” Charlie said. “I’ll be there for you.”

The bell above the door rang then Mickey, still kneeling by the boom box, heard Rhonda say, “Is Mickey in today?”

Mickey stood up, suddenly smiling widely, and saw Rhonda standing on the other side of the counter. She was wearing jeans and a dungaree jacket, a knapsack slung over one shoulder.

“Mickey,” Rhonda said, looking surprised. “You’re here.”

Mickey took off his apron, tossed it behind him on the counter, and went around the fish stands to greet her. He tried to kiss her but she pulled away.

“I have a class in a half hour,” she said. “I just came by to drop off a card. I didn’t think you’d even be here today.”

Rhonda took out an envelope from her jacket pocket and handed it to Mickey.

“Thanks,” Mickey said, suddenly happier than he’d been in days. “So how’re you doing? You look great.”

“Thanks,” Rhonda said quickly. “Anyway, I just wanted to give you the card and tell you how sorry I am.”

“It’s all right,” Mickey said. “He was old and I guess it was just his time.”

“I thought you said he was hit by a car.”

“He was. Hey, you wanna go get some lunch with me? I haven’t had anything to eat all day.”

“I’d like to,” Rhonda said, “but I really have to get to my class.”

“You said it doesn’t start for a half hour. We could just go to the pizza place across the street and—”

“No, I really can’t. Sorry. I mean I have to walk to school and—”

“Can I walk you?”

“That’s okay,” Rhonda said. “I mean I have to stop home first and get some books and—”

“You don’t have your books in your bag?”