Kevin Guilfoile - Cast Of Shadows

A police station is a lousy place to primp for a night on the town, Big Rob thought. It’s loud and the lighting’s bad (all fluorescents) and the mirrors are cracked and warped and marred with capillaries of water damage. Big Rob was a good-looking fat man, according to just over a dozen women in the last twenty years. Looking at himself in a mirror, not this one, a good one, Rob wistfully imagined what he’d look like if he were thin. He had dense, dark hair and his chin, the top one, was strong and square. His teeth were white and original. Although he carried excess weight in his face and around his belly, he was six and a half feet tall and his frame was proportionately large. God had given him the fat, he joked, because he was strong enough to carry it.

The squad room of the Brixton police station was small and communal. The chief had a cluttered and claustrophobic office, but the half dozen other employees and officers shared desks and made do. There were big windows on three walls, and the spaces between them were painted yellow – very different from the enclosed, whitewashed workrooms Big Rob was used to from his days with the Chicago PD. The break room was clean and the refrigerator, which seemed to hold little besides condiments and freshly packed lunches for that day’s shift, didn’t smell.

Civilians needed little more from this place than advice or a Samaritan’s hand. The Brixton cops helped people get keys out of parked cars and collared loose pets. Occasionally they took congenial statements from opposite sides of a fender bender, and Brixton had its share of drunk-and-disorderlies, as well as vandalism and domestic squabbles. Working out of the Brixton police station seemed to Big Rob like working in an ad agency or a bank.

“You all set?” Crippen’s delighted grin appeared in the mirror. Biggie gave him a thumbs-up. “This is exciting shit,” Crippen said. “Be careful, and don’t push it too far. Just try to get her loosened up with the margaritas and then let her talk.”

Big Rob nodded. “You know how you get to be a success with the ladies, even with a body like mine?” He tugged on an earlobe. “Be a good listener.”

At a bar called Hounds, Biggie easily found Peg at a square table with four friends. Peg had secured a fifth chair from another part of the bar and made camp on a corner that, due to a pair of lost screws underneath, tilted awkwardly toward her. In the center of the table, downed drinks left their fingerprints in thin pink films on the insides of the glasses, which were grouped together like the small woods that separated property lines in suburban subdivisions. It had been so long since a waitress had cleared the table that the ladies had only its perilous, slanting fringe on which to place their current beverages, although in the waitress’s defense, the women were emptying the glasses so quickly their drinking could have been mistaken for sleight of hand.

The bar was decorated with a half-assed British theme. Store-bought posters of green countryside, ruined castles, and ocean cliffs hung on the walls at angles in cheap black frames. A few kitschy Sherlock Holmes items – ceramics, toys, books – were scattered about on shelves. A reproduction movie poster was tacked next to the door. Displayed randomly were some Irish and Scottish items, as well. They poured Guinness at the tap, which made Big Rob hopeful for a pint of Tennent’s, but he should have known better. He backed away from the bar with his Harp and casually maneuvered through the crowd until his giant torso was only a few feet from their table, like a cruise ship anchored off a port of call. All five women turned.

“Good evening, ladies,” Big Rob said. “Do you mind if I buy the next round?”

When Sam Coyne was fifteen, a hornet stung him during cross-country practice.

An abandoned Milwaukee Northern line ran behind Northwood East High School, and Coach Carne had the team train over the split and rotting sleepers, on their toes, up to three miles out and three miles back for the varsity. The exercise steeled Sam’s will and fattened his calves, and by midseason he held the number-three spot on the roster, after Bruce Miller and Lanny Park, and even finished second at the Oak Park Invitational, which had a famously flat second half.

Lanny and Bruce and another teammate, named Bryan, had turned back at two miles, this being a Friday, with a meet the next day and a party rumored for that night. Sam promised he’d meet them later at Jan Tenowski’s, whose parents were in Lake Geneva. If she wasn’t already planning on taking advantage with a beer-baited get-together, they were sure they could talk her into it.

As the balls of his feet sprung again and again off the timbers, Sam’s legs felt good, which meant he could hardly feel them at all. There was a certain point in the middle of a quality run when they seemed to propel themselves. There was no pain, no effort, the oxygen arrived in sufficient quantities, and the rhythm of the footfalls both propelled and recharged him. At this pace, on this cool evening, he was certain he could run forever, and in the seconds right before the hornet struck, he was convinced that Lanny’s number-two spot could be stolen from him on a regular basis, starting tomorrow.

He had joined the cross-country team in the seventh grade, mostly because of girls. That’s not to say Northwood runners had significant numbers of groupies, although the cheerleading squad scheduled an appearance at one meet every fall in a display of pep they probably counted as charity. For an awkward and easily embarrassed thirteen-year-old, however, a spot on an athletic roster seemed like a minimum standard to meet socially, and Sam had always been blessed with good stamina, if not world-beating speed. Running allowed him to work alone, which he liked, but it didn’t single him out, either. The team shared the credit for success, but the blame for failure was distributed just as equally, and that was all fine with Sam. Most important, he was an athlete, which, in the eyes of girls, was the high school equivalent of having a good job.

There were other benefits, as well, his parents noted. Sam’s grades improved, and he gained confidence. He thought the teachers gave him more respect and, when he needed it, the benefit of the doubt.

The yellow jacket landed on his shin about six inches below the right knee. Sam looked down at it, but didn’t stop or break stride, as doing so suddenly on such a treacherous path would cause him to stumble. He stared down at the hornet, which clung to his skin even as his feet found tie after tie, sending vibrations up and down his legs. He leaned forward and tried to swat it away.

It stung.

Sam pulled up like a wounded horse and he slapped at it, meeting some resistance, as the insect hadn’t yet let go of the stinger. He fell and his left ankle turned painfully against the half-buried right rail.

“Dammit!”

In just a few seconds, the sting had become swollen and purple and painful. Sam stood panting beside the tracks and watched the wound mutate. It was the first time he’d been stung by an insect, and in the minute or so it took for him to catch his breath, he realized he was allergic.

The next time he was stung – by a bee, while playing in a three-on-three basketball tournament in Chicago – he was much older. That particular night, he called his parents.

“Did you go to the emergency room?” his mother asked.

“No, Mom,” Sam said. “I took a couple of Benadryl.”

“I remember the day you got stung during running practice.”

“Cross-country practice,” he corrected.

“Cross-country running practice, ” she snapped back, but then she chuckled. “Your ankle was as big as a softball when you got back.”