Tom Schreck - TKO

“The Polack says to his wife, ‘Don’t laugh-you’re next!’” Sam laughed his way back to his business office cubicle.

I’ve been at this job for over five years, and every day Sam stops by with a Polack joke. Like a chronic pain in the testicle, I’ve just learned to live with it.

I had a lot on my mind. Howard was MIA and had made me his Labrador. Son of Sam believed he got all his messages from his next door neighbor’s dog, and I guess that’s how I felt. Not like Berkowitz but more like the dog, because here I was, getting weird messages from a guy I only knew a little bit and because of that, I was suddenly the center of attention. Sam the Lab was just being a regular old dog when suddenly his life got spun around all crazy and it wasn’t even anything he did. I’m not sure what happened to him, but I’m betting he wound up on medication.

It didn’t make much sense to me that Howard would use me as a confidant. I didn’t feel like Howard and I had this super-tight bond. Then again, Howard probably didn’t have a lot of friends. You lop off a head or two in your youth and people never let you live it down.

I also had this fight in the Garden coming up. In my boxing career I’ve gotten used to being a short-notice fighter and I welcomed it. In the fight game there were always guys pulling out of fights for one reason or other. Sometimes it was injuries, sometimes it was contracts, and many times, despite what fighters will admit, it was fear. Sure, no one says, “Hey, I’m pulling out of this bout because I’m tired of shittin’ my pants all week and I don’t want to get punched in the head.” I was nervous enough to drop a pantload and I didn’t feel like getting my ass kicked by some million-dollar prospect, but for the chance to fight in the Garden-it was worth it.

I’ve had a difficult time concentrating lately, but with a full day of sessions I had to try to focus a bit. I say “a bit” because despite what some counselors will tell you, talking, or, more accurately, listening to someone for forty-five minutes isn’t exactly rocket science. My first session of the day was with Freddie Gleason, or, as everyone called him, Suda-Fred. Suda-Fred got his name from his drug of choice-Sudafed, the over-the-counter decongestant that has a stimulant effect upon the central nervous system, especially if you took ten at a time with a quart of coffee, which was what Suda-Fred would do. I didn’t need any fancy urinalysis tests to figure out if Fred had had a relapse. All I had to do was observe and listen as I greeted him in the waiting room.

“Hey Duff good to see you how’s everything? How’s the fight game? Man I love boxing-great game, great game, man I love boxing. How you doin’? You look good, any fights coming up? You like these sneakers? They’re new. You know what, you know what? Um, uh what was I just sayin’?” Suda-Fred exhaled all at once.

“Fred, have you-,” I tried to say.

“Have I what? Uh Duff, that really hurts, you think I’m back on that shit, wow that hurts Duff, man, man the Yanks win last night? Man, Duff, where’s the trust? Isn’t that what this is all about? Wow, heavy man. Those Yanks, man, it’s warm.”

Beads of sweat built up on Suda-Fred’s lip between his nose and the thin mustache. He was rail thin and his face was way more wrinkled than it should’ve been for a thirty-eight-year-old man. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail and he wore a red velour running suit.

“Fred, uh-”

“All right, all right Duff get off my ass will ya? It’s fuckin’ allergy season you know. Sorry, sorry, sorry for the bad language. I took a little today because of the snotty nose deal, really Duff, it was the snot, disgustin’ man, disgustin’ man. I took the blue ones, you know the 418s, they got that expectors in ’em or somethin’. Helps you get that snot out of your throat, disgustin’ man, disgustin’ man, sorry for the language, man,” Fred said.

“Coffee?” I asked.

“No I’m good, I’m good, don’t need no coffee Duff.”

“No, Fred. Have you had coffee?”

“C’mon, Duff, off my ass, geez, off my ass will ya? Uh, geez again with the language, sorry man, sorry. Sure, sure a little, you know that expressive kind at the Starbucks, the dark kind-is it warm? — shit I’m warm. Man, maybe it’s the velour, shit. Who the Yanks got tonight? Yeah Duff, expressive.”

“Espresso?” I said.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, probably made me hot-I’m not in trouble, am I? Duff you look in shape, you gotta fight comin’ up or something? I love boxing, love it, love the fight game. Shit it’s hot.”

Actually, you really can’t get in trouble for loading up on Sudafed and “expressive”-not legal trouble anyway. Suda-Fred had a little anxiety trouble, which often led him to less than a placid existence. So for the next forty minutes or so, it was my job to find out what I could about what had brought Fred to the Sudafed. Fred’s snot issues seemed to have been the trigger that brought on today’s relapse, but perhaps there was a deeper emotional antecedent that together we could uncover. It was up to me, skilled clinician that I was, to deconstruct the behaviors that led up to Fred’s use of the dreaded 418s.

Turns out all we could come up with was the snot, man, it was all about the snot. Fred and I spent the next forty-five minutes talking about congestion, alertness, and the Yanks-a lot about alertness.

After Suda-Fred, a session with Stanley Stillman was a welcome change of pace. Stanley was referred to the clinic by his employer’s employee assistance plan for an Internet addiction. Actually, they caught Stanley surfing porn on his company computer, and when they went through his computer logs it was pretty clear that he spent about seven out of eight hours a day on the boner sites. They tried to fire him but the union prevented it, got a doctor to give him an obsessive-compulsive disorder diagnosis, and now he’s getting paid time off to “recover.” I guess in his position as safety officer for the power company, his “recovery” was pretty important.

Anyway, he was a welcome relief because he barely said anything at all. I think the guy’s real diagnosis should have been something along the lines of “chronic traumatic embarrassment related to masturbatory activity.” The guys at the power company weren’t real sensitive to Stan’s plight, and not too far behind his back they referred to him as “the stroke-a-matic.” I wouldn’t feel like talking much either.

While Stan and I put up with the awkward silences, I thought about Howard. I racked my brain trying to think about how I could find out more about him. He didn’t have any family contacts and the counselors at the halfway house said he kept to himself. There was a ninety-page summary from his prison shrink that I hadn’t read all the way through yet. I’d read the first twenty pages and it didn’t say much of anything, so I’d skipped to the end where they had come to the conclusion that Howard was of very little danger to society, that his actions were the result of an abused adolescent mind processing extreme abusive stress, and unless those types of stressors were repeated, Howard was not a danger. They went on to say that even if Howard was placed under stress, he was unlikely to repeat the same violent activity.

Dr. Abadon read the report and he indicated that it was within the realm of possibility that Howard was in a way relapsing to his old compulsions and that if he was experiencing stress-which a release from prison to his old neighborhood would evoke-he could revert to old ways. That was a fair analysis, but I was afraid that one opinion might be enough for the police to assume Howard was the one and only suspect. With assholes like Larry “the Cop” Bird itching to do something dramatic, I was afraid Howard didn’t have a chance.