The wife and I saw Springsteen last weekend. Fucking guy played, like, three and a half hours straight. By the end, I was fucking exhausted. And I was sitting down most of the time. Bad hip.
None of that has to do with this story. I just wanted to tell you I saw the Boss. This story is pretty fucking good too. Anything that evokes the Boss usually is.
None of that has to do with this story. I just wanted to tell you I saw the Boss. This story is pretty fucking good too. Anything that evokes the Boss usually is.
Brilliant Disguise by Allan Leverone
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I was sitting on the couch in my boxers when the kid broke
into my place. The Sox were on, getting their asses kicked by the Angels.
The fucking idiot must have seen a ton of cop shows, because
he actually kicked in the door. The
frame splintered with a loud crack. The
door whipped open, bounced off the rear wall and damned near decapitated the
kid on its way back.
I sat quietly as he sauntered in, obviously trying to take
advantage of his dramatic entrance. Or at least maintain what was left of his
dignity.
He held a pistol in his right hand. I held a beer in mine.
I took a sip. Set down my beer. “You got something against
knocking?”
“Shut the fuck up.” The kid waved the gun in my direction to
punctuate his statement. It wasn’t the first time I’d looked down the wrong end
of a barrel and I guessed it wouldn’t be the last.
Assuming I survived.
“You can fuckin’ die, for starters.”
“Any particular reason, or just on general principles?”
The kid’s face crinkled up. “Huh?”
He looked like one of those little dogs blonde actresses
carry around in their purses. He didn’t seem a whole lot smarter than them,
either.
The dogs, not the blondes.
Or maybe both.
“I said why do you want to kill me?”
“Because you murdered my father. I’ve waited a long time for
payback. Today’s the day.”
***
A Springsteen song was playing in the background the day I
killed a man.
“Brilliant Disguise” as I recall. It was a stiflingly hot
summer day. Most of the tenement windows were open, since nobody could afford
air conditioning, and someone was rocking out.
The ironic part about the confrontation was the fucking car
accident was minor. I mean, minor like a true fender-bender.
And neither one of the cars involved was exactly fresh off the
showroom floor. The guy who hit me drove a van that looked like the Mystery
Machine from Scooby-Doo, and my car, well, let’s just say nobody was going to
notice one more dent.
By the time I climbed out of my car and turned toward the van,
its driver had stepped onto the heat-soft pavement and begun marching in my
direction with murder in his eyes.
And a sawed-off 12-gauge in his hands.
And he was screaming at me, saying I had stopped too
quickly, and he hadn’t had time to slow down, and the accident was all my fault
and what the fuck was wrong with me and some of other stuff I couldn’t make
out.
I said, “Don’t point that fucking gun at me.”
He pumped it. And kept coming.
I took three steps in his direction and he pulled the
trigger.
I took three more before he realized the gun had jammed.
I grabbed the 12-gauge out of his hands. He was too
surprised to stop me. I hit him in the side of the head with the stock and he
went down, and it felt so fucking good I did it again.
And again.
And again.
By the time some bystander pulled me off the guy, his head
was nothing more than bloody pulp, and the stock of his 12-gauge had been dyed
a blood-rust brown. Permanently, probably.
The whole thing happened so quickly Springsteen was still
playing when the guy died, his distinctive scratchy voice floating through the heavy
air.
I replayed the song over and over in my head until the cops
showed up and took me away.
***
My trial was a joke. Turned out the dead guy’s van was
filled with drugs. Heroin mostly. Thanks to a fucking fender-bender traffic
accident, the DEA was able to claim a major victory in the war on drugs.
Under the circumstances, my court-appointed lawyer made the
case that instead of jail time I should get some kind of citizenship award.
“Man of the Year,” maybe. Key to the city.
The prosecutor wasn’t buying it. “The victim’s skull looked
like a watermelon that had been dropped off a five-story building. And to make
matters worse, your client killed him in front of a busload of school kids.”
They offered voluntary manslaughter and a three-year ride.
I took it and did half.
***
The kid with the pistol was very bit as crazy as his old
man. I tried to tell him I’d acted in self-defense, even told him I was sorry.
I wasn’t above lying to save my ass.
He didn’t want to hear it. He moved farther into my
apartment, waving his gun around like a lunatic. I wondered how long it would take
the cops to show up. Someone must have heard the racket when the kid kicked in
the door.
I took another sip of my beer and got up off the couch.
“Don’t move! Don’t you fucking move!” The kid was scared and
wired and vengeful, all at the same time.
I raised my hands. “Dude, you think I’m going to fight you
in my underwear, with my junk hanging out? I just want to talk.”
I lied. I told you I wasn’t above it.
By this time the kid was less than five feet away. I took
one step forward and shoved his gun toward the ceiling with my left hand while
breaking his jaw with my right.
He went down exactly as his old man had, and that was when I
snapped.
Again.
I beat him even worse than I’d beaten his father.
And all I could think of while I waited for the cops to come was the lyrics to that Springsteen song that had been playing all those years ago in the Dorchester sun. “God have mercy on the man who doubts what he’s sure of …”
And all I could think of while I waited for the cops to come was the lyrics to that Springsteen song that had been playing all those years ago in the Dorchester sun. “God have mercy on the man who doubts what he’s sure of …”
