Letter From Milo: Working Up a Sweat
The other day my wife got on my ass about the state of my physical fitness, or rather, my lack of it. I had just awakened from a pleasant afternoon nap when the lovely Mrs. Milo came home after a hard day of selling real estate, lunching with her slutty girlfriends, and teaching Pilates classes.
“Have you been lying around in your underwear all day?”
“Ah, no, dear. I was just in the process of…”
“I wish you’d be more active. You’re starting to look sloppy. You need to start exercising once in a while.”
“I took a nice walk today.”
“Yeah, I know. You probably walked down to Swillagain’s and spent the afternoon drinking with all the bums that hang out there.”
“That’s a harsh thing to say. I know for a fact that two of the guys have regular jobs.
“Since when is pot dealing considered a regular job?”
“So, what’s your point?”
“The point is that you’ve got to start taking better care of yourself. You have to start exercising. I don’t care for you that much anymore, but your daughters are still somewhat fond of you. They wouldn’t mind having you around for a few more years.”
“Okay, sweetie, I’ll give it some thought.”
Physical fitness is important to my wife. When I first met her she was a touring dancer, in as good a shape as it’s possible for a human to be. Dancers take strenuous, exhausting classes every day, and often put on even more tiring performances those same evenings. They have to stay in shape. Their bodies are their instruments. I doubt there are many people on this planet, aside from professional athletes, who are in better shape than professional dancers.
When my wife retired from dance, she had a hard time giving up the physicality of the dancing life. She tried taking an occasional dance class but old injuries – knee, neck, ankle – kept flaring up. She fretted for years about her physical conditioning. I mean, God forbid that she should gain a pound or two. Then she discovered Pilates, which, as I understand it, is something the Communists invented to replace sex.
She liked Pilates so much that she became a Pilates’ teacher. Now she’s happy. She’s found a physical regimen that can keep her busy and in great shape until she’s 112 years old and driving her ninth husband crazy.
One the other hand, I don’t give a rat’s ass about exercise, physical fitness or anything else that distracts me from the important things in life, like drinking, smoking, enjoying recreational drugs, eating red meat and entertaining impure thoughts.
That said, I know my wife will make my life miserable unless I start some sort of fitness program. And once the kids start in on me, well, let’s just say things will get interesting, in the Chinese sense of the word.
So, the next afternoon I went down to Welles’ Park, a Chicago Park District Fieldhouse on Sunnyside by Lincoln Avenue. They have a well-equipped gym there, which doesn’t cost much to use.
The guy behind the counter was a typical Chicago Park District employee – gruff, overweight, with a pack of smokes in his shirt pocket. I thought I smelled liquor on his breath, too, but I wouldn’t swear to it. After I filled out the paperwork and received a laminated Welles’ Park membership badge, the guy offered to show me around the fitness area.
“You ever use any of this shit before?” he asked, pointing out all of the exercise equipment.
“Can’t say that I have. What’s that?”
“That’s called a stationary bike. You gotta watch yourself on that thing. We had a regular customer, used to come in four or five times a week. He’d ride that thing nonstop for an hour. Last week he was riding on it and just keeled over.”
“Was he okay?”
“Fucker died.”
“That’s too bad. How old was he?”
“About your age.”
“Damn.”
“That’s a treadmill over there. It’s like a walking machine. A couple of months ago a guy was on it and had a heart attack. He died, too.”
“How old was he?”
“About your age, I guess.”
“What the hell!”
“That thing over there is a rowing machine. Last month a guy…”
“Don’t tell me. He was about my age, right?”
“No. I believe he was a bit younger than you.”
I had heard enough. I handed the Park District guy the laminated badge and said, “You can take this badge, give it back to Mayor Rahm and tell him to stick it up his ass. This place is a death trap. I’m getting the fuck out of here.”
I was a bit shaky when I left Welles Park. There’s no telling what terrible things would have happened to me if I had stuck around and tried a few exercises. Fortunately, I had to pass Swillagains on the way home, so I stopped in for a few drinks and enjoyed a hand-rolled smoke with my friend, Nickel Bag Bernie, just to calm down.
When I got home, a few hours later, I was in the physical and mental shape that I prefer above all others. The lovely Mrs. Milo, sipping a nice white wine, was waiting for me. “Well, how did it go?” she asked.
“How did what go?”
“Your trip to Welles Park.”
“It went okay.”
“Did you try any of the equipment?”
“Let’s say I checked things out.”
“So, do you feel any better?”
“Honey, right now, I feel great.”
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Letter From Milo: Elvis Came to Gary, Indiana (and Gave Me a Cadillac)
The first celebrity I ever met was Duncan Renaldo, who played The Cisco Kid in the 1950s TV series of the same name. Mr. Renaldo must have been down on his luck when I met him because he had been reduced to appearing at a third-rate county fair in Lake County, Indiana, just outside of Gary, where he was selling autographed photos for two dollars each.
If I remember correctly, Mr. Renaldo charged a little extra if you wanted him to pose for a picture with you.
Before Duncan Renaldo paid Gary a visit, the most well known people in town were Fat Willie Bosco, whose claim to fame was eating 22 Coney Island chili dogs during a half hour lunch break, and Harold Wozniak, who became a prominent professional wrestling referee. So, it was understandable why even a minor TV star, 15 years past his glory days, would draw a crowd. Mr. Renaldo did very good business at the Lake County Fair.
There was, and probably still is, a severe shortage of celebrities in Gary. It’s not like Los Angeles, where you can bump into Lindsay Lohan at a liquor store, or New York City, where you can run into Woody Allen hanging out at FAO Schwarz.
Duncan Renaldo and his horse, who’s not from Gary….
So, you can imagine my surprise when I ran into Elvis Presley on the streets of Gary.
It was an early Saturday evening and I was walking home after spending the day at Gene’s Billiards, playing pool, smoking cigarettes, and trying to win some money on the pay-off pinball machines. I was nearly home when a flashy maroon Cadillac Eldorado, with Tennessee license plates and carrying four passengers, pulled up to the curb in front of me.
One of the Cadillac’s tinted windows rolled down and a voice with a distinct southern accent said, “Son, can you help us out? We’re having trouble finding an address.”
I was hesitant to approach the car. I intuitively understood that a Cadillac loaded with hillbillies is something to be avoided. Still, I didn’t want to be rude, so I said, “What’s the address?”
This is Elvis — not sure it’s Gary….
When the man told me the address, I said, “I know where it is, but it’s a rough neighborhood and real hard to find. I doubt a map would help you.”
“Do you know how to get there?”
“Yeah.”
The man quickly conferred with his fellow passengers. “Why don’t you hop in the car,” he said to me, “and show us where it is. We’ll pay you for your help.”
“Do I look like some sort of dumbass? What makes you think I’d get in a car with strangers. You might be a bunch of Tennessee perverts, for all I know.”
When I said that, the guys in the car started laughing. Then the rear passenger door opened and the guy I had been talking to stepped out of the Cadillac. I was getting ready to run when another guy followed him out of the car. To my complete amazement, it was Elvis Presley.
Elvis stood on the sidewalk for a moment, looking around and sniffing the fetid Gary air. “Man, this place is a real shithole,” he commented. Turning to me, he said, “You know who I am, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“The address we’re looking for belongs to Mr. Jimmy Reed. He’s a famous blues musician. I want to visit the man and pay my respects, because I’m putting one of his songs on my next record. I would consider it a personal favor if you’d show me to his house.”
I got in the car, sat between Elvis and a 300-pound man named Lamar, and gave the driver directions. After a while, someone asked if we were getting close to Jimmy Reed’s house.
When I said “We’re in shouting distance,” Elvis began singing a tune.
“Big Boss man,
Can you hear me when I call,
Big boss man,
Can you hear me when I call,
You ain’t so big,
You’re just tall that’s all.”
When we parked in front of Jimmy Reed’s house, Elvis went up the door, knocked, and went inside. He spent about 10 minutes in the house. When he came back to the car Lamar asked if he had seen Jimmy.
“Yes I did, but the old boy was passed out drunk in his easy chair. I heard he has always enjoyed hard liquor. But I had a nice talk with his wife. She’s a real sweet lady.”
After we left Jimmy Reed’s house, the guys gave me a ride home. Before I got out of the car, I said, “I recall someone saying I was going to get paid for showing you where Jimmy Reed lived.”
Elvis laughed. “Just give your address to Lamar. I’ll make sure you get paid for your trouble.”
Two weeks later, a sleek, cherry red Cadillac Eldorado was delivered to my door, compliments of Elvis Presley. I wasn’t old enough to drive, but my father enjoyed tooling around town in the Eldorado. Unfortunately, shortly after Elvis’ Cadillac arrived, the Old Man lost the car in a poker game in East Chicago.
I wrote Elvis a letter, explaining what had happened to the Eldorado, hoping he would send me another, but he never wrote back.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to numerous complaints from readers about the frequent exaggerations and outrights lies in Milo’s blogs, The Third City’s fact-checking department has been keeping a close eye on his posts. After weeks of painstaking research, we have been forced to conclude that there is absolutely no evidence, factual or anecdotal, that Elvis Presley ever set foot in Gary, Indiana. And although Indiana’s municipal record keeping is notoriously unreliable, it appears that during the period that the Elvis Presley incident allegedly took place, Milo was serving a lengthy stretch in a downstate reformatory.
However we were able to verify, through employment records at the Armour & Company meat packing plant, that Jimmy Reed did, indeed, live in Gary, Indiana, during the period in question. He was also known to have a drinking problem. Finally, we were able to ascertain that Duncan Renaldo did, in fact, once make an appearance at the Lake County Fair.
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Letter From Milo: Killing Time
Every few months I go down to the Jesse Brown V.A. Hospital to get my liver checked and try to convince my doctor to prescribe some, ah, more interesting meds. This past Friday, as I was leaving for the hospital, the lovely Mrs. Milo said, “Can you find something to do until about four o’clock this afternoon?”
“Why?”
“I’ve got some gals coming over for a business lunch and it’ll probably run late.”
“How come you don’t you want me around? Are you ashamed of me?”
“Not exactly. But you can be a distraction sometimes.”
“Well, I wish you had told me about this earlier. I would have made some plans.”
“Honey, it’s only a few hours. I’m sure you’ll find something to occupy your time.”
Friday is generally the best day to visit the V.A. It’s not as crowded and appointments don’t run too far behind schedule. I didn’t have to wait very long to see my primary physician, Dr. Frankie “Disco” Lopez.
“Dude, we’ve got to make it quick,’ Dr. Frankie said, when I walked into his office. “I’ve got a horse running in the fifth race at Arlington and don’t want to miss it. How do you feel?”
“I feel okay, I guess.”
“That’s great. Saves me the trouble of giving you an examination. Anything else?”
“Yeah, I need some new pain meds, preferably some sort of powerful opiate.”
“Are you in pain?”
“No, but every once in a while I get some stiffness in my groin area.”
“Apparently, you don’t need Viagra. I’m going to give you some new pain meds that were recently developed by a Nigerian pharmaceutical company. I should wait for FDA approval before prescribing it, but I’ll make an exception in your case. Take two pills in the morning and you’ll feel better than James Brown all day long.”
“Thanks, Doc, I really appreciate it.”
I had to wait about a half hour for my meds, so I decided to go outside and enjoy a nice refreshing cigarette. While I was having a smoke I thought about what my wife had said earlier. What did she mean when she said I was “a distraction?” Was I a good distraction or a bad distraction? Or did she just use the word “distraction” because she was too kind to use a more fitting description.
I admit I can be a loose cannon at times. I’ll sometimes do things that don’t make sense or say things that I later regret. And I’m pretty sure my behavior is getting worse as I get older. I hate to think that I’ve become an embarrassment, someone too boorish, too rough around the edges, to mingle in polite society.
How long would it be, I wondered, before my wife started chaining me to the radiator.
I still had a few hours to kill after picking up my meds, so I decided to enjoy a few drinks at Swillagain’s Saloon. Although it was early Friday afternoon, the place was already filling up with regulars. It was great to see and have drinks with old friends and acquaintances, people I’ve known for more than 30 years. These people seemed to think highly of me. A couple of them even invited me to smoke a joint with them.
Still, I couldn’t shake the thought that my wife thought so poorly of me that she couldn’t trust me to behave properly around her friends. I decided to express my concerns to my old and very wise friend, Harlan the bartender. He listened carefully as I explained my situation.
When I finished, he asked, “Is your bar tab paid up?”
“Yeah, I settled it last week.”
“Then you’re a fine human being.”
I left Swillagain’s a little after four o’clock. The few hours I had spent sipping cocktails and catching up with old friends had eased my mind. In fact, I felt mighty fine. I realized that I was just being foolish, making a big deal out of nothing. I was not a crude, loutish character, lacking in the social graces. I was, instead, a witty, charming, sensitive, and, if I do say so myself, a very handsome man.
The lovely Mrs. Milo’s business lunch was still in progress when I walked in the door. She and her guests were seated at the dining room table, which was cluttered with laptops and spread sheets. My wife seemed surprised to see me, but quickly recovered.
“This is my, ah, husband, Milo,” she said, introducing me to her guests.
The ladies all smiled prettily, some of them saying it was nice to meet me.
I acknowledged their greetings and said, “So, what are you bitches up to?”
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Letter From Milo: Otis and the Mad Scientists
The good times never last. Just when you think you’ve got life by the nuts, something comes along that makes you realize how naïve and foolish you’ve been. One day you’re on top of the world, the next day a piano falls on your head, or your wife leaves you, or your doctor says you need a liver transplant.
I’ve heard it said that a wise man hopes for the best but prepares for disaster. If that’s true, then I must be a real dumbass, because I never saw the shit storm coming.
My problems began a few years ago when a mangy bastard of an alley cat followed my youngest daughter home and weaseled his way into my household. I did everything I could to chase the flea-ridden fucker away. I threw rocks at him, squirted him with a water hose, and tried to run him over with my power mower, but nothing seemed to work. As a last resort, I was going to shoot him, but the cat was obviously familiar with firearms, because he ducked out of range as soon as he saw me come out of the house with my pistol in hand.
The cat was a tenacious son of a bitch. He wouldn’t take a hint. He just hung around my back porch, grooming his ratty fur, trying to pass himself off as some sort of respectable house pet. Eventually, he endeared himself to my wife and daughters and, against my heated objections, they adopted him. They even gave him a name, calling him Otis.
Just as I had expected, it didn’t take long for Otis to reveal his true nature. He was a remorseless killer, a cold blooded assassin. In a little while I started finding the pitiful, gnawed remains of birds, mice and bunny rabbits in my back yard. When I pointed out the fact that Otis was decimating the local wildlife, my wife and daughters told me I was imagining things. They refused to believe that their beloved cat had an evil bone in his body.
As bad as I felt about Otis’ slaughter of innocents, there was something else about the cat that bothered me even more. At first I couldn’t put my finger on it, but when I figured it out, it shattered me.
I had come to the heart-breaking conclusion that my family likes the cat better than they like me. For example, when my eldest daughter, who lives a few miles away, comes to visit, she barely acknowledges my presence. Instead, she rushes straight for the cat, picks him up, cuddles with him, and showers him with baby talk.
“What a cutesy little kitty you are. How’s my favorite little guy in the whole world. Ooh, I miss you so much.”
And when my wife comes home the first thing she asks is if I had fed the cat. She doesn’t seem to care to about my nutritional needs. It was plain to me that I had become a second class citizen in my own home.
A while ago I was sitting in Swillagain’s Saloon, sipping a few cocktails and brooding on this humiliating turn of events, when a guy came in and sat on the stool next to me. He was well dressed and wearing flashy jewelry, but I noticed that his hands were badly scratched and there seemed to be deep gouges on his face and neck. We struck up a conversation and, in time, he asked me what I did for a living.
“I’m a famous and wealthy blogger. How about you?”
“I’m a licensed cat broker.”
“What?”
“A cat broker. I provide cats to pharmaceutical companies for medical experiments.”
“That’s interesting. How does someone end up in that line of work?”
“To get started, you have to get either a Class A or a Class B cat broker’s license. Class A licenses usually go to breeders, because they raise cats specifically for medical experimentation purposes. I’ve got a Class B, which allows me to collect cats from anywhere I can find them. I get cats at animal shelters, find them in alleys, and buy them from private owners.”
“What happens to the cats?”
“Let’s just say it ain’t pretty. I’ve heard all sorts of stories. Some cats get their spinal cords broken so they can be tested with paralysis drugs. Some cats get blinded so researchers can investigate their visual cortexes.”
“Jesus!”
“One guy told me they deliberately induce strokes in cats by blocking the arteries to the animals’ brains. Another thing they do to cats is anaesthetize them, open their skulls and remove the membranes which line inside of the head. They let the cats live for a while to see if any cell regeneration has begun, then they kill them and remove their entire brains just to obtain a few nerve cells for study.”
“Very interesting,” I said, considering the possibilities. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
Just then, the cat broker’s cell phone rang. He spoke in hushed tones for a moment, turned to me and said, “I’ve got to run. One of my contacts informed me that a cat lady just died in Wicker Park and she’s got 49 cats. I’m going to see if I can make a deal with her heirs.”
“Well, it’s been nice chatting with you,” I said.
“Likewise,” he replied.
“By the way, do you, by any chance, have a business card?”
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Letter From Milo: My Friend the Bank Robber
I wasn’t always a famous, wealthy and beloved figure in the blogging world.
I know it’s hard to believe, but before I was overwhelmed by fame, fortune and the paparazzi, I was just a regular guy. By regular guy I mean I was an average Joe, shuffling along in obscurity, content to make a living, raise a family, get drunk once in a while and get laid on occasion.
Then, the feces got into the central air. Like regular guys everywhere I got hit hard by the Great George Bush Economic Meltdown. The small business I had owned and mismanaged for many years, the Dumbass Advertising Corporation, Ltd, LLC & Sons, nearly went under. The cash stopped coming in. The lovely Mrs. Milo had to shoulder the main burden of keeping us afloat. I had to do something, anything, to crank up the cash flow.
So, I got a night job.
It wasn’t a great job. I had never done anything like it before. I won’t even mention what it was except to say it wasn’t anything I’d care to post on my resume.
The best thing about it was the hours, six hours a night, four days a week. It allowed me to keep my normal activities going during the day and it provided much needed cash. It was what I needed at the time.
The business wasn’t exactly a fly-by-night enterprise, but it was real close. The workforce was a mixed bag of characters. There were middle managers who had been downsized, college kids working their way through school, retirees who couldn’t make it on their pensions, whores who were too old to make a decent living, a number of young men with crude jailhouse tattoos, musicians who had wasted their youths trying to get record deals, a few people who were obviously junkies, and of course, an aging, burned out advertising man.
It seemed that anyone who wanted that job could have it. The only requirements were the ability to read and write and minimal computer skills. None of the employees stayed long. Turnover was ferocious. After a month there were only two of us left out of a group of 12 that started with me.
The other guy was a man named Teddy, who, as a young man, had made a living as a bank robber in Mississippi.
Of course, he didn’t blurt out this information at our first meeting. We had to become friends first. And that wasn’t easy. I wasn’t looking for friends and I doubt if Teddy was, either. All we were looking for was a paycheck, preferably one that didn’t bounce.
But as new faces kept showing up week after week, and the people we knew drifted away, Teddy and I began spending more time with each other. We’d eat lunch and take smoke breaks together, and after work we’d walk to the El train together. Teddy generally carried a half pint in his jacket and had a drink or two on the walk to the train. He was a gentleman and always offered me a drink. And I always accepted.
It was while walking to the El one evening that Teddy said, “Man, you don’t know how good it feels to be walking down this street.”
“It’s a beautiful night.”
“It’s more than that, Milo. You see, I spent 22 years in prison, in Mississippi. Got out eight months ago. Just getting on this El train and going anywhere I want is sweet.”
“Damn, man. 22 years?”
“Yeah, robbed four banks. I should have stopped at three.”
When I got home that evening, I opened a bottle of wine, poured a hefty drink and thought about Teddy. I would have thought someone who had served so much prison time would be bitter and angry. But Teddy was just the opposite. He was one of the sweetest natured men I’d ever met, always smiling, always genial. I never heard him say a bad word about anyone. He even had a playful side, which he allowed me to see.
He had begun greeting me at work by giving me an ugly look and saying, “Motherfucker, where’s my money?”
And I’d reply by saying, “Spent it, motherfucker.”
Teddy always laughed at my reply and said, “Shit, man, I would have done the same thing.”
One evening as we walked to the El train, I asked Teddy, “It must have been tough being a black man in a Mississippi prison?”
“It wasn’t easy. The funny thing is that my own people made it tough on me. You see, most of the trustees and guards at the prison are black men. But they have to answer to white men. So they can’t look like they’re taking it easier on their own people than on whites. Motherfuckers can make your life miserable, sometimes.”
“How’d you get this job, anyway? The application form asked about felony convictions.”
“”They just asked if you had been convicted of a felony in the last seven years. Shit, man, I been in prison a lot longer than seven years.”
Another time, Teddy said, “Stolen money don’t last long. This short money we making here last longer than bank money. My biggest hit was $30,000 and it was gone in a month. Course I had to split it with a partner. If you a criminal you got a lot of expenses. Plus, you get crazy with the money. When you work for your money, you watch it closer.”
About a month later, Teddy came in late to work, which was unusual. He never missed work and he was always punctual. He was also disheveled and smelled of alcohol, another unusual occurrence. He never drank at work.
“Are you okay, man?” I asked.
“My woman put me out. I had to move all my shit into my brother’s place.”
“Damn, man, that’s rough.”
“Bitch went crazy. Accused me of all kind of shit. I swear, Milo, I ain’t even looked at another woman since I been out of jail.”
About an hour later, Teddy abruptly stood up at his cubicle, raised his face toward the ceiling and hollered something I couldn’t quite make out. Then he rushed toward the exit door.
That was the last time I saw him.
Word on the street was that Teddy had broken parole, either a domestic dispute, something to do with a car or a concealed weapons charge. I was pretty sure he didn’t go back to robbing banks because I didn’t read anything in the papers about any local banks being robbed. He might be in prison in Illinois or maybe they sent him back to Mississippi. Who the hell knows?
One thing I do know is that I miss him. He was good company and always cheered me up when I saw him.
Sometime in my life I’d like to see Teddy again. If I do, I’ll throw my arms around him, give him a big hug and say, “Motherfucker, where’s my money?”
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Letter From Milo: Jailbird
The numbing isolation, the sterile atmosphere, the eerie silences, the wretched food and the uncertainty of what lay ahead, all combined to make being locked up in the Gary, Indiana City Jail a horrible experience.
Due to my age — I was in my mid-teens — I was locked in a cell in the Isolation Unit to keep me away from older, hardened criminals. At the time, I was the only prisoner being kept in the Unit.
The worst thing about jail, I decided, was the lack of stimulation. There was nothing to do and nobody to talk to. It was the most drab, boring and lifeless place I had ever been. Everything was painted gray — the walls, the ceilings, the bars and cots. The only breaks in the stifling expanse of gray were a few spots on the walls and floors where the paint had chipped and flaked away, revealing the rusting metal surface beneath the coat of paint.
On my second day in jail, another prisoner was brought into the Isolation Unit. I heard a commotion in the gangway and then, a moment later, saw two cops half-dragging, half-carrying a limp, sobbing woman past my cell.
I was standing at the bars, watching as they hustled her to a cell. As they passed, the woman turned her head to look at me, her face a mask of smeared make-up, scratches and bruises. She continued crying after being locked in her cell, her heaving sobs slowly giving way to quiet weeping before subsiding to sniffling and hiccups.
She was just a couple of cells away from mine, so I called out to her. “Hey, lady, are you okay?”
“Mind your own fucking business!” she called back, then, began crying again.
“Jeez, lady, don’t get all worked up. I was only trying to be friendly.”
“I’m sorry,” she blubbered. “I don’t mean to be rude. I’m just having a real bad day.”
“That’s okay. I haven’t had a good day since I’ve been here.”
“How long have you been here,” she asked, still sniffling.
“This is my second day.”
“I saw you when they brought me in. You look kind of young. What did you do?”
I didn’t want to tell her what I had really done, so I lied. “I, ah, robbed a couple of banks.”
I heard an odd noise coming from the direction of the woman’s cell. It was a swishing, rasping sound, like someone tearing paper or ripping cloth.
“I don’t mean to stick my nose in your business,” the woman said. “But if I were you I’d consider another line of work. Bank robbers don’t last long.”
“I didn’t plan on making it a career.”
“You ever do any pimping?”
“No, but I’d like to look into it.”
“Let me know if you ever decide to pimp. I need a new one. I just shot mine about two hours ago.”
Thoughtlessly, I blurted out, “Why’d you shoot him?”
I immediately regretted asking the question. I had just met the woman. I didn’t know her well enough to ask such an insensitive question. She must have had a very good reason for shooting her pimp, otherwise why would she go to all the trouble. I figured it was a private matter, something personal between a man and a woman, and certainly no business of mine.
I was on the verge of apologizing for prying into her affairs when she said, “You want to know why I shot Leonard?”
“I didn’t mean to get personal. I was just…”
“I shot Leonard because he sold me to some bastard from Minnesota. The shitbag was going to put me in a trailer and drag me around to migrant farm worker camps so I could fuck Mexican fruit pickers all night long.”
I heard the ripping sound again. It was definitely coming from the cell where the woman was locked up. I was going to ask her about it but she started talking again before I could say anything.
“Leonard told me I was old and worn out. He said my best days were behind me. He said I wasn’t bringing in enough money anymore. He had the nerve to tell me it was strictly a business decision. He said that a smart businessman has to rotate his stock and keep the inventory fresh. Can you believe that shit?”
The woman fell silent for a moment, then, I heard that puzzling tearing sound again. Curiosity got the better of me and I asked her about it. “Hey, lady, what’s that noise?”
“What noise?”
“That ripping noise. It sounds like somebody’s tearing newspapers or something.”
“Oh, that. I’m just trying to fix my dress. The cops ruined it when they arrested me.”
I heard the sound again, then the woman said, “You know, I was only 17 when Leonard found me. I was still in school, working at the Tastee Freeze in Miller Beach. I was just a dumb kid. I didn’t know anything. In three months Leonard had me working the streets. I spent 16 years with him. He beat me, cheated me, abused me and just generally treated me like shit. And then, when I had given him everything I had, when there was nothing left to give, he turns around and sells me to some cocksucker from Minnesota.”
The woman began crying again, carrying on for a minute or two. When the tears stopped, she said, “Hey, I never did get your name.”
“It’s Milo.”
“That’s a fine name, a solid name. It sounds like a name you can trust. Milo, can I ask you to do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“If I tell you my name, will you promise to remember it?”
“No problem.”
“You swear it? You swear you’ll remember my name?”
“I said I would.”
“My name is Frances. Frances Higgins.”
“That’s a nice name.”
“Please don’t ever forget it, okay? Frances Higgins.”
“I’ll remember.”
“I know you will. I’m tired. I’m real tired. I’m going to take a nice nap now. It’s been good talking to you, Milo.”
“Good talking to you, too, Frances.”
I heard some scuffling and grunting noises coming from the direction of Frances’ cell. It sounded like she was settling in for her nap on the creaky metal cot. I wanted her to get a good rest so we could talk more when she felt better. There wasn’t much to do in jail other than talk, and it seemed like Frances had a lot of interesting stories to tell.
A couple of hours later the fat turnkey came by with supper. He slipped my aluminum tray through the slot in the bars, then, pushed the food cart toward Frances’ cell. Suddenly, the sound of food trays falling to the concrete floor rattled through the gangway. I heard the turnkey yelp, “Sweet baby Jesus,” as he rushed past my cell, a look of horror on his jowly face.
In a short time the gangway was filled with uniformed cops and plainclothesmen, all of them milling around Frances’ cell. I tried to find out what happened but my questions were ignored. I had to rely on overhearing the cops to figure out what had caused all the excitement.
“You cut her down.”
“I don’t want to. She probably shit all over herself.”
“Wait until the ambulance gets here. They’ll cut her down. That’s their job.”
“Stupid bitch.”
“Well, she was smart enough to make a noose out of her dress.”
“What was her name, anyway?”
“I can’t remember. Her street name was Francesca. That’s the handle everyone knew her by. She’s been around forever.”
After a while the cops began drifting away from Frances’ cell, heading back to the desks and cubicles they came from.
“Hey, officer,” I said, as one of the cops passed close to my cell.
“What do you want, punk?”
“The lady’s name was Higgins. Frances Higgins.”
The cop stopped for a moment, glanced at me impatiently, and said, “Nobody gives a fuck about a dead whore’s name.”
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Letter From Milo: The Barracuda
There were a lot of fine billiard parlors in Gary, Indiana, the town where I grew up. My two favorites were Gene’s Billiards on 7th and Washington, and The Club, located near Broadway on 5th Avenue, right next door to the Gary National Bank building.
Gene’s Billiards catered to a young crowd, mainly teenagers from the near west and east sides of town. It was sort of a “starter” pool room, where young men learned and perfected the manly skills of smoking, drinking, gambling, spitting and cursing, as well as the delicate and often lucrative art of banking a nine-ball into a corner pocket.
Gary’s founding fathers were a narrow-minded, blue-nosed bunch. When they drew up the city’s statutes, they added some very unpopular, and probably unconstitutional, legal restrictions, one of them being that a person had to be at least 18 years of age to enter a whorehouse, gambling joint, opium den or pool room. If that wasn’t bad enough, they set the drinking age at 21. Of course, Gary’s industrious citizens rightfully ignored those ridiculous blue laws, and so did I.
I started hanging out at Gene’s Billiards when I was 15 years old.
As I mentioned, most of Gene’s customers were young guys. It was rare to see anyone older than their early 20s in the place. The real hard-core pool players hung out at The Club, where the high-stakes action was legendary. At Gene’s, a one-dollar nine-ball game would usually draw a crowd.
One day I was killing time at Gene’s with a couple of my high school buddies, Butch Johannes and Dickie Kaiser, when a stranger walked into the pool room. He was an older man, maybe 40 or 50 years old, tall and slender, with thinning slicked back hair, and a prominent nose. He had a slightly shady, untrustworthy air about him but that was a fairly common trait among pool room denizens.
He said he was from Detroit and his name was George, but his friends called him Barracuda.
The Barracuda was the best pool player any of us had ever seen. The day he first walked into Gene’s he easily beat Marty Spanier, who was the best player in the house, out of 10 dollars in a nine-ball game. He was so good that none of us would play him straight up. He had to resort to gimmicks, like playing one-handed or spotting an opponent 10 or 15 balls in a 50-point game of straight pool, just to get some action.
The Barracuda certainly knew his way around a pool room. Within a couple of weeks, Gene hired him to manage the place. Running Gene’s wasn’t a difficult or time-consuming job. The Barracuda’s duties consisted of handing out racks of balls, keeping track of time cards, re-tipping damaged cue sticks, brushing down the tables, refilling the soda machine and breaking up the occasional fistfight. When he wasn’t attending to his duties, the Barracuda was practicing, sharpening his skills. He’d spend hours lining up balls and knocking them into the pockets.
It was while watching the Barracuda practice that I got a brilliant idea. I had recently seen The Hustler and considered it the greatest movie ever made. Although Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason were great, the character that most impressed me was Bert Gordon, the sleazy bastard portrayed by George C. Scott. Bert was the money man behind Gleason’s character of Minnesota Fats. He bankrolled Fats and, in turn, took a hefty percentage of his winnings.
Why couldn’t I and a couple of my friends bankroll the Barracuda, take him down to The Club, where the high stakes players hung out, and make some money.
I approached Butch and Dickie and explained my idea to them.
“That is fucking genius, man,” Butch said.
“I’m in,” Dickie said, rubbing his hands together. “I need some extra money. I was thinking about buying a car.”
When we made the offer to the Barracuda, he smiled knowingly, as if he had been down this road before, and said, “So, you boys want to bankroll me, is that it? What’s your cut?”
“We get half of everything you win, plus our initial investment.”
“Sounds fair to me. How much cash have you got?”
“60 dollars.”
The Club was an old-fashioned pool parlor, with a barber shop fronting the place and a lunch counter along one of the side walls. Beyond the lunch counter was the pool room proper – 12 pool tables and six snooker tables. At the entry to the room, above the cash register, was a large chalk board that was updated, inning by inning, with the scores of major league baseball games. In the fall, the chalk board tracked the progress of football games, both college and pro. And, of course, there was a private back room, where high stakes poker was played 24 hours a day.
Butch, Dickie and I settled into three of the spectators’ chairs that lined the walls and watched the Barracuda work the room. After about 20 minutes, the Barracuda found a game, nine-ball, with 20 dollars on the nine. His opponent was a Puerto Rican guy, who I got to know a couple of years later, named Feliciano, although everyone called him Felice.
The Barracuda won the first game. As he pocketed Felice’s 20 dollar bill, he turned to where we were sitting and gave us a cocky wink and a thumbs up.
Butch and Dickie gave each other high fives. “Fat City, baby,” Dickie said, a huge grin on his face.
Unbelievably, to our complete shock, the Barracuda proceeded to lose the next four games. Felice busted him. Our 60 bucks was gone. We were crushed, our spirits beaten down. We felt so bad that we didn’t even bother saying goodbye to the Barracuda, who seemed to be avoiding us anyway. We just skulked out of The Club and trudged off to live out the rest of our miserable lives.
We had put our faith, and money, in the best pool player that we had ever seen. Unfortunately, we were young and inexperienced, and didn’t understand that big fish are sometimes better off staying in small ponds. We foolishly assumed that he had to be a great player, just because he was so much better than any pool player in Gene’s. The young players in Gene’s, however, turned out to poor measuring sticks.
“Barracuda, my ass,” Butch groused. “More like a fucking guppy, if you want my opinion.”
The night after losing our money, the Barracuda rifled Gene’s cash box, broke into the soda machine and pilfered all the nickels, dimes and quarters, stole the expensive two-piece cue stick and leather case that Gene kept in a glass display case, and disappeared.
We never saw or heard of the Barracuda again. I, for one, didn’t miss him a bit.
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Pull My Finger. Written by Milo. Read by Andy Orscheln, Lorenzo Toia, Joel Reitsma, Nels, Laura Korn and introducing Benny Jay as Rolando. Produced by King Conundrum.
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