Big Joe's Fan Club

"His name was Joe, big Joe McCabe. Bastard, just a horrible prick of a man. Nowadays, he’d be dealin’ tenner bags for somebody better organised, but there was none of that back then. So, he hung around with other hard men – or, if you like, real hard men – and got his screw when anythin’ was on the go. Reset...that’d be sellin’ stolen goods to you...stuff ripped off from the docks, cases of whisky, tobacco was a big favourite. And strange stuff for our neighborhood, sometimes. Cuban cigars, I remember. Was how I learned what a cohiba was, how about that? And he did the occasional wee robbery...I think. Ripped off shops, broke into offices, stole tools, whatever they could lay their hands on. And if the big man – Shuggy Devlin, he was called, needed a face striped, big Joe would do that, too, once or twice. Never worked, never had a job, just drew his dole and spent his whole time crooked. And he wisny even that good at it. Small-time, never had any ambition. Take away his back-up, take away Shuggy and his boys, and he could only hit women and kids.”

“Jack and your mama, you said.”

“Aye. He was every bully you ever heard about. My sister...she was older, never seemed to wind him up. Kinna got on his good side, agreed with him or somethin’, dunno. Just made ma look bad by comparison, I always thought, not that she ever talked back, anyway – but how do you figure the way a guy like that ‘hinks? He only hit Frances once or twice – me, more’n that, but not often, and only when I was younger.”

“You got on his good side, too?”

“Not hardly. More the opposite. See, I’m not Johnny, I’m not Frances...with me, he was, I dunno, different. Careful, after a while. Wary. You can get out your dime-store psychology book now, cuz that’s where we’re at. Seemed like he could sense a weakness in people, like – listen to me talk, jeez – like an animal can. Just somethin’ basic, fundamental. He went for the weaker ones, Johnny – he was the youngest – and my mother, some people would call her a doormat. I’d be one of them.”

“Christ, Steve.”

“Well, you asked. See, Johnny, now, in his own way...whatever bullshit he broadcasts, he likes strong women. Always been the same – not CEOs and senators, okay, but not doormats, definitely. He doesny know it, but he’s desperate for his woman not to be like his mother, cuz he’s -”

“- never gonna act like your papa. I can see that. I can see what you say abou’ John. Yeah...I can see he don’t know it, too...where they now, your mama and papa, gone?”

“Aye, long gone.”

“Just...gone?”

“Not ‘just’, not really. It’s the usual story, pretty much. Never mind the psychology, you’ve seen a hundred movies where the victim fights back – that was what happened. Only it wisny the big victims, not him and ma, it was me. He hadny actually touched me for a coupla years...longer, mibbe, thinkin’ about it...and I just watched big Joe hit him and her. Drunk or sober, he just...he had this fuckin meanness in him. Find somebody weaker’n him and lay it on them. Bastard, dirty bastard. And, like I say, it’s the usual story. I began to lip him up – you do that again, I’ll no fuckin stand for it, I’d tell him, and he’d laugh. But he never hit me, just laughed and said ‘come ahead’ and then he called me a big poof when I never actually did anythin’... happened a few times, until, y’know, the time I did do what I said and went over the line.”

“How far over?”

“Far enough. Plenty far...fuckin miles. He skelped ma cuz his tea wisny ready. Punched her on the jaw, decked her in the living room. She got up and he hit her again, I says ‘quit it’. He goes ‘aye, who’re you, ya big prick?’ and I just lamped him. End of.”

“That simple?”

“Yes and no. He howled and he looked at me so I clattered him again and he goes down...it got ugly, have to say, Jesus, was it ugly...but I’m still proud. Aye...proud’s the word. Cuz I booted him where he lay, kicked fuck out of him, over and over again and he’s shoutin’ ‘ahh’ and ‘I’m dyin’’, so I toed him again and he’s...he’s shrieking like a pig and I dragged him up and pulled him out the door by his hair – some head of hair on him, big Joe. Hah. And he’s yowlin’ away...Then I booted him down the stairs in the close and he rolled over himself, scuddin’ his way down those stone steps, two flights, big stairs they were an’ all, kept kickin’ him until he was down on the ground floor, and he’s in tears by that point. He gets half up on his knees and I booted him again in the stomach and told him to fuck off and never come back...he says nothin’ , just staggers out into the street. He ran down the road, one shoe on, blood for skin, howlin’ like livestock. I broke his jaw and five ribs, right there. Like I say – ugly. But it got the job done. I was fourteen, big as I am now, but fourteen, still. Kinna big night for me, that.”

“Madre. He come back?”

“Sure he did, when he could, when I was out. My ma wanted him back, y’see? He wheedled his way in the door and it was easy, cuz she actually wanted to say yes. I told him to fuck off but he apologised and said that anyway, I was outvoted.  Ma said okay, Johnny was just a kid and Frances would just go along. So, somehow, it was me was causin’ the trouble. And that was him, back in the house, back in her bed.”

“He still the same?”

“No...he was a lot more careful. Kinna creepy, in a way, bein’ nicer-than-nice and it’s all ‘aw-right-son, how’re ye doin the day’?’ every five minutes. But people don’t change, not like that, was a matter of time and that was the drink, that time, the time he went back to bein’ how he was. See, he’d lost a lot of his swagger after what happened when I gave him a doing and chucked him out. He never reported it to the polis – how embarrassin’ was that for a hard man, given a tanking by a fourteen-year-old? – and anyway, what did they care if somebody like him got bleached? But Shuggy Devlin and them, they knew, and he never got his face back. Plus, he was gettin’ older anyway, and soon he just gets to be a hanger-on. He never was high up the pole in the first place, and when a soldier loses it...he was nobody. I knew, eventually, he’d take it out the old way, and it’d be ma, cuz she’d complain least. Johnny was on my side by then, if you’d call it that.  And then he did it. One night, I was out, he came home early, steamin’, and he raised his hands to her.

“I came in, saw what’d happened and just told him to get off his mark and never come back, else he’d get a leathering that’d’ve made the first one look like a fuckin massage. He just went, hardly said anythin’ and I never had to touch him. My ma never said a word to me, just looked at me, like...I was the bad guy.”

Florida Fried Lawyer

“Mr O’Donovan can see you now.”

We could see him, too – hard to miss, with a white bouffant wig wafting around his skull as if he’d scalped a fashion-depleted snowman, violet-flecked red face like a pre-schooler’s Ritalin-fuelled mad monster painting. His handshake said sincerity and the sweep of his arm said yew’re welcome. Florida Fried Lawyer.

“Come on in, y’must be Stephen – welcome to the great state of Florida, sorry about the weather!”

“Oh, we get rain in Glasgow...although we’re short on hurricanes.”

“Ah, well, we might still be spared – Dixie’s movin’ slow and unpredictable, could be she just creeps up the coast, kicks them in the ass ‘bama way, serve ‘em right. We’ll see. Now, to business - I guess John has expressed to you his predicament?”

“Sure, a lot of predicament-expressing lately in our company.”

“All right. Now, the police wish him to go undercover on their behalf, at his own risk, which would expose him to significant jeopardy, you follow?”

“Uh-huh – no jeopardy worse than significant jeopardy. That’s pretty much the king of jeopardies, right there.”

“Most assuredly! So, my counsel thus far to John has been to face the unpalatable possibility of jail time. Incarceration’s not what anybody wants in their future but most likely he’ll spend a little time in one of our more white-collar corrections institutions – hey, he din’t rape a busload’a missionaries, did he? – and then prolly get kicked back home to bonnie Scot-land to finish his bit. Maybe even, God willin’, your legal people say ‘okay, time served, you can jest go’. And John’s a free man.”

“I hear a lot of what-ifs in there, Tiresias.”

“Oh, call me Ty! And yeah, the law is a capricious mistress. You can’t say for sure what hat she’s gonna wanna wear, any given day. But you...let me put it this way... you can try to determine what the weather’s gonna be like and you can select your own finery on the back of that. Dress the way you think she’ll like. Yeah?”

“I canny see the question for the metaphor, Ty, but here’s a straight one back – what advice are you givin’ to Brady Pike? What suit’s he gonny wear?”

“What what now? My dear friend Brady is lost to us. Such a tragedy. His family din’t even have the comfort of sayin’ goodbye to him. Lovin’ daddy, much missed by all.”

“Mm. I think that exact phrase was in the papers. Loving daddy, much missed. Must be true.”

“Undoubtedly. He made some, uh...some errors of judgment in some a’ his business dealin’s, just like your brother John, but he was a fine man. Not jest his family’ll miss him, the wider community has lost a real committed citizen. A good Christian. And, me personally, a friend.”

“I only wish I’d’a been able to meet him. He sounds like what we call a roaster in Glasgow. But what I asked – what advice are you givin’...did you give...to Brady Pike? Same as for Johnny – suck it up and do the time?”

“Wait along a minute, now. Do I hear somethin’ a little untoward in your tone? Whyncha come out and say it, you think there’s some malfeasance here?”

“How long did you know Brady Pike? Ten, twenty years? I don’t know that kind of detail, y’see.”

“Well, I’m sure I dunno where you’re goin’ with this, but yeah, musta known Brady a good while. His daddy was a friend a’ mine, so mosta his life, y’might say.”

“Whereas you met Johnny only...when?”

“Your brother could tell you that much, Mr McCabe, you ast him. When he and Brady set up their business together, that’s when. I did some a’ the paperwork on the legal side...and nothin’ financial, case you got a mind to spread some more’a that shit you got goin’ on there.”

“No need to be defensive, Ty. Think how this looks from my side – I’m jist a simple guy, but I see my brother here in trouble, his own fault, no doubt, but the only legal advice he’s gettin’ is ‘you’re beat, take the medicine’? Now, I could say that to him, but he’s not payin’ me to be his lawyer.”

“O-ho, he’s not payin’ me neither, how’d’ya like that? On account, he’s got no money! He’s livin’ in a north-east St Pete condo with a waitress and – whaddya know? – that’s not the lifestyle of the rich and famous in the Bay area. Where’s your theory now?”

“Actually, that’s very interestin’. Why are you doin’ charity work? Guy you hardly know, complete loser to hear you tell it, can’t pay you, and he’s got no case. So why are you takin’ out his garbage? It’s not as if you’re actually fighting it – you’re just makin’ sure his wee slot car never leaves that groove. That’s bland legal advice. You’d probably call it a-no-dyne.”

“Here, now...I’m gonna give you a little headroom, on ‘count you maybe don’t have the unnerstannin’ to grasp the idea of pro-bono, nor neither the manners to cover your lack...but I haveta say, your attitude here since you walked in my door kinda stinks. ‘fact, you strike me as a real classless motherfucker. And I’m thinkin’, why are you wastin’ your billable hours, Ty, on this hillbilly Loch Ness Monster bullshit? This one, he jest sits on his ass like some fuckin ba-boon, lets his big brother wipe his ass ‘cept there’s no cleanin’ gets done, cuz bro don’t know shit in this town. I reckon we’re done, wuntcha say?”

“You seem to have lost your dictionary, Ty. All those twenty-dollar words didn’t make it past the first question mark, huh? Anyhow, you can send your bill for no dollars at all to that condo you mentioned and we won’t trespass on your hospitality again.”

“Oh, you’re welcome. Hope you don’t spend too long in Raiford, regrettin’ this conversation, John McCabe. Y’all have a good one.”

Tonight, Tonight, Could Be Just Any Night

I parked the Sonata behind Johnny’s jeep and stepped from the car into the hibiscus-scented heat. The night was clammy with moisture rising out of the damp land and drifting from the tropical storm that still lurked out to sea. Cicadas clicked and whirred their abdominal song somewhere in the dark.

“When do I get to meet...Lola?”

“You don’t need to snigger every time you say that, it’s her real name.”

“I know, I know. I just hope she’s got a hat made out of fruit – serious fruit, pineapples and that, never mind grapes and berries.”

“You’re headin’ for a disappointment, then. I’m up here, on the second floor, it’s a walk-up.”

“Well, there’s plenty plants growin’ in these gardens, she could always pick some flowers if she’s in a hurry, wee vine or two...Is this technically a condo? Or is it just...apartments? Or efficiencies? I could never sort out the words from the places.”

“Okay, I get your point. I’ve lived fancier places, but I’ve lived a helluva lot worse. So have you, Stevie. So have we. I used to have this great place over by Boca Ciega, but that’s a thing of the past now. This is okay – can still see the sea...water, anyway. And aye, it’s a condo. I think.”

The movement was barely perceptible, a shiver off to the right among the bougainvillea that trailed up the sides of the apartment block. Something... someone...shifted weight and the plant trembled.

Johnny was fumbling for keys, head down, as the shiver became a shudder and a flickering figure stepped sideways, half out of the shadow. No possible way to see that except as a threat. I lurched forward, yelling.

“Johnny! Down! Down!”

Instinct fought orders and instead of diving he turned towards the source of the noise – me. I caught Johnny full in the chest, arms wrapping around him and hauling him down below the level of the hedge.

Noise, now, to the right. Scuffling feet, a gasp in the silence. Then, shots.

One, two, three...then a fourth, hesitant. Around us, vegetation sings and earth thuds as the shots flail harmlessly by, velocity spent.

The sound of feet clacking on floor-tile, receding. Somewhere in the middle distance a car door open, closes, and an engine barks to life, wheels skidding on parking lot tarmac as it rips away onto the street and into the night.

Cicadas still trilled and resonated in the echoing silence left marooned after the gunshots’ passing. I eased myself off the huddling form of my brother and inhaled.

“Y’okay, not hit?”

“Nah, I don’t...no. I’m okay.”

“Good. Take a breath. They’re gone – he’s gone. Shhhiiiiit. Listen, is this the kinna neighbourhood where that was a normal night out? Or will your condo buddies be dialling 911?”

“S’fine, it’ll be fine. If the 5-0 don’t show in a coupla minutes, I’ll call them.”

“If they don’t show up in a coupla minutes? What? You worried what the neighbors might think if you called? More worried about that than gettin’ dead?”

“It’ll be okay. I dunno, I’m too...fuck, Stevie, I’m scared. I never expected that.”

“I know you’re scared. The old Johnny would’ve been kiddin’ on he was hit, just to wind me up. Christ, I’m scared...I never signed on to be target practice. Seems like you’re in even deeper shit than you thought.”

“Aye...and I thought it was already pretty deep.”

We scrambled unsteadily to our feet and breathed deeply, shivering still in the humid night.