Big Mike: Black Comedy Excerpt No. 15 — Catching Up

Time for a recap. So far, we’ve run 14 installments from my new novel-in-progress, Black Comedy. Read on. — Big Mike

This whole crazy mess began with a greaser named Joey Dudek sitting in a tree next to The Shack in Park Nine in the middle of the night. He was waiting for Julian Perdue, a black man, to arrive for a secret meeting with Al Dudek, Joey’s old man. Joey had a gun and a pocket full of Snickers bars. Al didn’t know he was there. When Julian and Al faced each other, Joey tried to talk himself into pulling the trigger, hoping to avenge a humiliation Julian had brought upon the Dudek family. Joey tried his damnedest to muster the courage to kill a man for the first time in his life. A shot rang out. Julian and Al fell to the floor, Al bleeding to death and Julian severely wounded. Only Joey hadn’t pulled the trigger.

We went back in time to late summer 1967. Anna Dudek, Joey’s sister and Al’s daughter, met a scruffy, dreamy, Abbie Hoffman-worshipping hippie named Chet Michalski in Old Town. Chet was a journalism major at Northwestern University and a reporter for the new underground newspaper, The Seed. Chet’s parents had worked night and day to send him to Northwestern. They hoped he’d go on to get a good job and make the family proud. He had other goals — namely, the end of poverty, racism, militarism and two or three other bugaboos he was happy to expound on to anyone he’d meet. Well, Chet’s parents couldn’t say he wasn’t ambitious. Chet took his first step toward ridding the world of its evils when he tried to toss a can of red paint at President Lyndon B, Johnson’s Secretary of Defense, who was visiting the Northwestern campus. He missed. Still, he was expelled from the university.

Robert McNamara And His Successor, Clark Clifford — If Chet’s Aim Had Been Better, A Lot Of Lives Could Have Been Saved (Image from Life Magazine)

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The afternoon Chet intercepted the letter notifying his parents their son had been kicked out of school, he and Anna smoked pot and had sex for the first time. Their big moment came to a rousing conclusion as The Doors’ “Light My Fire” played on the radio. Oops — one of Chet’s little wrigglers penetrated Anna’s egg. After Anna told her mother, Tree Dudek, about her condition, Tree flew with her to Denver for an abortion. In the hotel room as Anna showered, Tree poked her head in the bathroom and told Anna to speed it up or they’d be late for the doctor’s appointment. Those would be among the last words Tree would ever speak to her daughter.

Ultimately, Chet’s parents would learn of the red paint incident and its fallout. They in turn expelled him from their home. He moved in with the parents of his high school best friend, Scott Rabin. Scott was out on the West Coast, studying under Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. His old man, David Rabin, was a long time radical who was tutored by Saul Alinsky. Mr. Rabin worked at The Woodlawn Organization on the South Side, first with Nick Van Hoffman and then with Rev. Arthur Brazier. Chet idolized David Rabin.

It was in Chet’s room at the Rabin home that he and Anna once again smoked pot and had sex. This time, the Rolling Stones’ “Under My Thumb” was playing on the radio. And — wouldn’t you know it? — Chet impregnated her a second time. When Tree learned about Anna’s indelicate condition, she became furious. She refused to help her daughter and vowed never to speak with her again. In fact, she wanted Anna out of the house. Al, on the other hand, was only concerned that the Dudeks wouldn’t be scandalized and his daughter wouldn’t be ditched by Chet. So, he worked out a deal with his Outfit capo pal Jackey (The Lackey) Pontone to buy a house down the block and give it to Anna and Chet as a wedding present — even though no nuptials had even been discussed as yet. As always, Al was being an optimist.

When Anna told Chet her father had given them a house, he was delighted. His grin faded when she told him it was to be a wedding present. But Chet was not an impractical young man. He grudgingly accepted the terms of the gift. Anna, Chet, and Al set a date for the wedding — Saturday, April 6, 1968. “It’s a good time for a wedding,” Al said. “Nothin’ ever happens in early April.”

***

Winter moves into spring. Anna and Tree have not spoken a single word to each other since January. Despite telling Al that she wanted her daughter thrown out of the house after Anna’d become pregnant a second time, Anna remains in the Dudek home on Natchez Avenue in Galewood on the Northwest Side of Chicago. Anna’s lucky she has Al on her side.

The old Mondi home on the west side of Natchez Avenue isn’t like the rest of the bungalows on the block. It’s a little bit smaller with French windows and a steep A-frame roof. It’s quaint in a way the other homes aren’t. They are like Chicago itself — strong, solid, unassuming — well, at least like Chicago likes to think of itself. The old Mondi home almost looks like a mountainside chalet, albeit one constructed of red brick with limestone detail.

Jackey Pontone helped Al Dudek purchase the home from the widow Eva Mondi, whose husband’s head was largely separated from his body by a shotgun blast on the front sidewalk. The shotgun was carried by Tony Spilotro, the city’s up and coming hit man. Spilotro’s colleague, Harry Aleman, the dean of Chicago’s professional killers, then pumped three bullets from his .357 Magnum into the chest of the fallen Carlo Mondi to make sure he wouldn’t get up and try to reassemble the pieces of his cranium. The pomegranate-colored stain Mondi’s blood had left on the concrete still was visible. Since Carlo’s untimely demise, neighbors had respectfully sidestepped the stain as they walked past the home.

Jackey Pontone has a well-earned reputation for helping out his neighbors. The widow Eva Mondi will never have to worry about money for the rest of her life. She has Jackey Pontone to thank for that. Jackey is a good neighbor and a man of honor. He was, after all, the employer of Tony Spilotro and Harry Aleman.

The first thing Al did when he took possession of the home was to have the sidewalk replaced. Then he had new gutters and downspouts put in and central air conditioning installed (the Mondis only had window units). Those tasks completed, he brought in crews to work on the inside of the place. There were painters and carpet-layers, plumbers and electricians. Al was determined to have his daughter and her soon-to-be husband move into a palace. He thought, Hell, she made a stupid mistake. Does that mean she has to suffer the rest of her life? I’munna do everything I can to give her and her husband a fresh start.

Even Joey is pitching in. Al has hired him to clean up after the workmen after school each day. Joey is now a sophomore at Holy Cross High School. He still can’t read, not in the sense of being able to understand what is written in his textbooks or the newspapers, but he can do a fairly good job with the TV Guide, say, or Playboy. He’s good with a broom and a scrub brush, though, so Al’s paying him $1.25 an hour to make the old Mondi home sparkle.

It’s almost six o’clock on Thursday, April 4th. The wedding’s only two days away. The big rehearsal dinner is tomorrow night. Joey’s at the Mondi home — er, the Dudek home…, no, wait…, the Michalski home — wiping down the windows with newspapers and vinegar. He steps back and admires the gleam on the big picture window overlooking Natchez Avenue.

At this very moment, a drifter steps into the rust-stained bathtub of the common bathroom on the third floor of a flophouse just off Mulberry Street in Memphis, Tennessee. He has carried in with him a Remington 760 Gamemaster wrapped in a ratty blanket. He unwraps the high-powered rifle and points it out the window of the bathroom, across Mulberry Street, toward the second floor balcony of a motel.

The drifter has been accepting cash payments from a variety of wealthy men who want him to take care of a problem for them. They’re paying other such drifters and shady characters as well. One of them, they are certain, will be able to get this thing taken care of.

This particular drifter peers through the scope of his Remington and fixes the cross hairs on the head of a well-dressed black man who leans on the railing and chats with some friends in the parking lot below. The drifter pulls the trigger a single time and a pointed .30-06 Springfield slug travels across Mulberry Street in a fraction of a second.

The bullet slams into the well-dressed black man’s jaw on the right side, shattering it. The momentum of the projectile disintegrates the man’s throat. It continues on to sever his spinal chord, takes a downward turn, and lodges in his shoulder. The man, now completely paralyzed, falls backward from the force of the blow. There is a fist-sized hole on the right side of his face and neck where the bullet entered his body. He cannot speak, he cannot move, and — within seconds — his heart can no longer function. The problem has been taken care of.

Naturally, Joey doesn’t know anything about all this as he walks home. It’s almost eight o’clock now. It’d been unusually warm today, nearly 80 degrees. Joey is sweating. He can’t wait to get home, mix himself up some Wyler’s lemonade, and sit in Pa’s recliner to watch a little TV. That is until Pa gets home and he’ll have to cede the seat.

The TV warms up. Joey takes a long gulp of lemonade, dribbling some on his white T-shirt. Some 35 seconds after Joey switches the TV on, a picture appears on the screen. Joey squints to check the dial from across the room. Channel 26. “D’a hell?” he says aloud. There’s only a picture of that Martin Luther King on. That and some boring music, like a funeral song. He presses the clicker. Channel 2. Walter Cronkite. “What’s the news doin’ on?” Joey says. The screen goes from Walter Cronkite to some place with a balcony and a big sign and a white Caddy and a two-toned Dodge parked in the lot. Joey squints again. He thinks he can make out the two words on the sign. He says them aloud: “Laura Mahttell.”

“Shit,” Joey says. “Nothin’s on.”

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Join us Sunday as Black Comedy continues on The Third City

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