Dan O'Shea - Penance

“Sounds like a death wish,” said Lynch.

“Hey, he wants to die, I want him dead, I got your racial harmony right here,” said Riordan.

Lynch stopped Riley in the hall outside the conference room. “Listen, couple of things I want to run past you without the audience.”

“OK,” said Riley, pushing open the door to the men’s room. “Step into my office.”

Riley walked over to a urinal and started taking a leak. “So what’s up?”

“ME found something on Hurley once he got him in the shop. No easy way to put this. Looks like Junior was a fag. He had semen in his ass. Stefanski’s semen, so far as the ME can tell.” Lynch was watching closely to see how Riley took this.

Riley kept pissing. Finished, zipped up, turned around.

“This on paper?”

Lynch decided to play a little dodge ball on that one. “Not in the ME’s report. He wasn’t sure this had anything to do with the murder. Didn’t want it out there if it doesn’t need to be. Kind of a hard thing to overlook, though.”

“Yeah. Jesus. Fuckin’ Stefanski. I mean, I knew he was a goddamn pervert, but a turd burglar? Damn.”

“I know. So this colored shit? Could be. But then I got this fag thing, and I gotta wonder.”

“Yeah. I can see that. So where you going with it?”

“Gotta run it out.”

“Yeah. Old man know?”

“Haven’t told him.”

“Let’s hope you don’t have to. He’s got a little kill-the-messenger streak in him.”

“Anyway, wanted you to know, just so nothing comes at you out of leftfield. You can decide what the mayor needs to know. Speaking of which, you want me to fill in the Fed twins or your pet spook?”

“The Feds are just here to help out with the nigger shit. Don’t tell them nothin’ on this other stuff. Fisher? Don’t even talk to that bastard you don’t talk to me first. That son of a bitch makes my sack shrivel up. As far as what the mayor needs to know, I ever gotta tell him the kid was taking it up the ass, we’re both screwed.”

Later, Riley and Ezekiel Fisher walked through the plaza, past the Picasso statue.

“ME got the fag stuff,” Riley said.

“We had to figure that was possible,” said Fisher. “Is it being pursued?”

“This Lynch guy, he’s got the bit in his teeth. I’ll leave that with you.”

“I understand,” said Fisher.

1971

Declan Lynch pulled up the alley behind the house on Neenah and parked the Impala next to the garage. He was working on the upstairs bathroom with his boy and had all kinds of crap in the garage. His wife Julie was kneeling down, facing the house, working at the strip of flowers she always kept along the wall. Her butt sticking out at him in a pair of tight plaid Bermudas.

“Damn, yard looks better already, long as you stay bent over like that.”

She sat back on her haunches, flicked her dark hair out of her face, and turned to look at him over her shoulder.

“You are just a fiend, Declan Lynch.”

“Trust me on this one, doll, I’m way down on the fiend scale.”

She got up and walked across the small yard, meeting him at the gate, quick hug and peck.

“So, big shot, how’s life down at City Hall?”

Lynch blew out a long breath. “Baby, month from now I’m either gonna be commissioner or I’m looking at life on traffic duty.”

She gave him a quick squeeze, just letting him know how things stood with her. Felt good.

“You should get upstairs and see the kids. They’ve got a surprise for you.”

“That good or bad?”

She smiled. “I haven’t checked yet.”

Lynch walked past Missy, their old black lab, sleeping against the fence next to the dog house he and Johnny had built a couple years back, went in the side door and up the stairs. House was the typical quasi-bungalow that filled up the whole northwest side. Upstairs had one big unfinished room when he bought the place, with two bedrooms, kitchen, one bath, and a parlor down. Last summer, he’d roughed in the plumbing to put another bath upstairs, Johnny working right there with him. Kid had a real talent for it, picking up stuff just watching. Through the winter, he and Johnny had roughed in the walls, turned the rest of the upstairs space into the new master bedroom, put the shower and toilet and sink in. All that was left was getting the tile down on the bathroom floor and painting.

As Lynch went up the stairs, he could hear Johnny talking to his sister.

“That’s it, Collie. Just run that rag along there and get that extra grout up before it dries on the tiles. You’re doing great.”

He heard Colleen giggle. “It’s cold.”

At the top of the stairs, Lynch could see the boxes from the tile place, couple of corner pieces Johnny had snipped off sitting in an empty box.

“Fe, fie, fo, fum,” Lynch rumbled, turning the corner toward the bath. “I better not find things screwed up by no bums.”

“Daddy!” Colleen squealed, running out of the bathroom. She was only seven. Johnny walked out behind her, wiping his hands on a shop towel. Smile on his face told Lynch all he needed to know — kid had done things right.

“Hey, Dad.”

“How’s it going, buddy?”

“Got the floor in. Collie’s just helping me finish up. Gotta seal the grout tomorrow.”

“Let’s have a look.”

Lynch stuck his head in the door. Floor looked perfect. Couple more cut-up tiles outside the door than there should have been for a floor this size. Figured the kid measured wrong, or they cracked on him. But that’s why you got extras, and that’s how you learned.

“Damn. Looks real nice.”

“Didn’t we do a good job, Daddy?” asked Colleen.

Lynch scooped her up. “You did a great job, Collie. Your brother teach you how?”

Great big smile spread across her little round face. “Yep.”

“Is he a good teacher?”

Suddenly, she looked serious. “Daddy, he is the best brother in the whole world.”

Lynch reached out and tousled John’s hair. “Guess I’m a lucky man.” He buried his face in Colleen’s neck and blew a loud raspberry. She squealed again, Johnny smiled, and Lynch heard his wife coming in the back door.

“If the construction crew will come downstairs, I’ve got a great big bunch of weeds I’ve pulled out ready for dinner.”

Colleen laughing. “Mom, we can’t eat weeds!”

His wife shouting up the stairs, “Well, I might have something else for the picky eaters.”

Johnny smiling at him like he got it, like he understood how much it meant to be part of all this. Lynch thinking so what if he got traffic duty for life.

Later, Lynch was in the kitchen grabbing a beer from the fridge when his wife called him from the living room where she was watching the news.

“Honey, you better get out here. You’re going to want to see this.”

Lynch walked into the living room just in time to see Simba or whatever his name was standing on the street in front of several of his followers almost screaming into a row of microphones, looking a little washed out in the lights for the cameras.

“White fear-mongers tryin’ to incite hatred, say it’s the Black man you have to fear. It’s the Black man gonna break into your house, gonna kill you in your sleep, gonna rape your women. When Fred Hampton tried to say the Black man don’t have to live in fear, don’t have to live in shame, it wasn’t no Black man came for him. It was the white cops come and shot him in his bed. The white pigs come and murdered him and then walked away smiling while the white judges and white DA all say, ‘Yah suh, dat’s fine. You go on and shoot down that black dog.’ And now I hear dey coming for me, saying I killed the mayor’s pet boy, pretty boy walking around talkin’ how only the fine white man can save us poor Black folk. You pigs all come on. But don’t expect me to be lyin’ asleep in my bed. You want war, we be warriors.” He thrust his fist into the air, holding it there, and the line of black men behind him did the same. “By any means necessary.” All of them shouting in unison. Then he turned and walked back through the middle of the pack.