Favorite Sons (33 page)

That is, until the rogue fist found home, covering my nose, upper lips, and left cheek.

It was not a sharp, jabbing pain, but a percussion shock, a wave of pressure that rolled over my body, interrupting the electronic impulses between my brain and my legs. My knees buckled and I crumpled, falling back first against the door, then down, smacking my jaw hard on the steel kick plate at the bottom of the door opening. It was as though a huge weight was lying on my head and I could sense the black edges creeping in from the sides and knew I was about to lose consciousness.

I drifted in and out. Warm blood streamed out of my nose and snaked around and into the corner of my mouth, leaving a warm, metallic taste, like I was sucking on a nail. There were, I believe, two men rummaging through my car. I could hear them talking, though I couldn't decipher the words. To my scrambled brain, it seemed as if they were speaking in broken sentences and talking through wax paper. When I became cognizant of my surroundings, the first item to come into focus was the milky haze of the streetlight. I was trying to work my way up on my elbows when the man who was standing over me said, “Just stay down, boy.”

It seemed like sage advice. I lowered myself back to the street and was surprised how comfortable the cold gravel and dirt felt. I don't remember losing consciousness again, but I don't remember the men leaving, either. At some point, they were simply not there any longer. The dome light threw a faint glow on the ground where I lay.
I reached for the inside door handle and struggled to pull myself up, wedging my back in the “V” that was created by the open door and car body. Blood dribbled from my face and dotted my blue and pink pinstriped shirt. That's when the phone rang. I ran my hand over the gravel where I sensed it had dropped and miraculously found it.

In a groggy tone I said, “Hello.”

There was a moment of silence on the other end. “Hutch?”

“Yeah.”

“You don't sound so good. Are you all right?”

I spat away a mouthful of blood and dirt. “No, I'm not.”

“Where are you?”

“In the alley.”

“What alley?”

“In the alley behind Naples.”

The phone went silent. I eased myself onto the passenger seat, keeping my feet hanging out the side of the Pacifica. A few minutes later I heard the sirens of police cars and the emergency squad closing in. By the time the flashing lights filled the alley, I was beginning to think clearly, which also made me more sensitive to my throbbing face. I also was aware that the headlines in tomorrow's papers would be of the Republican candidate for attorney general being found pummeled in an alley in Steubenville.

The paramedics ran up and swarmed over me. One shined a light in my eyes; another wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my arm, then stuffed a cotton wad up my left nostril; a third asked me questions, gauging, I assume, my awareness of my surroundings. None of them had any idea who I was.

One of the cops asked, “Did you get jumped?” I nodded. “Did you get a good look at him?”

I held up two fingers. “Two guys . . . never got a look at either of 'em.”

After they saw my condition was not life-threatening, things relaxed. A shadow appeared on the gravel, cast by a man in a clerical collar standing near the open door. “I don't think he's going to need last rites, Reverend,” one of the medics said.

“Good thing. I'm not Catholic,” said the Reverend Dale Ray “Deak” Coultas. “And neither is he.” He looked down and, seeing
my face swollen and smeared with blood, asked, “Are you okay?” Without waiting for an answer he turned to the nearest medic. “Is he okay?”

“He'll live. He's going to need some stitches to close up that gash inside his lip.”

A cop shined a flashlight inside my car. “Was it a robbery?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Must have been.”

He shined his flashlight beam in the cup holder, which held the folded sixteen dollars and change from the fast food breakfast sandwich and coffee earlier that morning. My briefcase was lying on its side on the passenger seat; my laptop computer had slid halfway out.

“Did he take anything on your person?” he asked.

I patted myself down. My money clip was in my pants pocket and the car keys were in the other. My cell phone, which had been lying in the alley in clear sight, had not been touched. “It doesn't appear that anything is missing.”

“It's not a robbery if they don't take anything.”

“I'm well aware of what constitutes a robbery, officer.”

He didn't like my cute remark and shined the light in my eyes. “If it wasn't robbery, smart guy, then what's the motivation?”

“He must not have liked my face.” The cop licked a pen and began applying a date to an incident report.

“I don't want to make a report. I can't identify them and they didn't steal anything. Let's just let it go.”

The cop clicked his pen and shrugged. “Suit yourself. It makes my life easier.”

“Do you want us to take you to the emergency room and get checked out?” asked a paramedic. “You might have a concussion.”

I waved him off. “I'll be fine. Appreciate your help.”

When the squad and cruiser were gone, Deak stepped closer and pushed up my upper lip, which hurt like hell, and looked inside my mouth. “You've got a pretty hefty gash in there. You're going to need some stitches.”

“I don't want to get my name in the paper over this.”

“You got mugged. You did nothing wrong.”

“It'll just raise a lot of questions that I don't need at this point in the campaign.”

“Well, you can't ignore it. The whole inside of your mouth is opened up.”

I spat some more blood. “What if we drive across the river to the hospital in Weirton?”

“Hold on a minute,” Deak said, pulling his cell phone from his pants pocket and dialing up a number. “Doc, it's Reverend Coultas. Doing well, thanks. Unfortunately, I'm with a friend who's not in such great shape. Yeah, he was downtown and got jumped. He needs some stitches inside his mouth. Uh-huh, I suggested that, but he has a phobia about hospitals and won't go. Yeah, I know. You will? Terrific. Thanks. I'll see you there in about ten minutes.” He slipped his phone back into his pocket. “That's one of my parishioners. He's going to meet us at his office.”

“He's a doctor?”

“Sort of. He's a veterinarian.”

“He's what?”

Deak laughed. “Just kidding. Let's go.”

“You're pretty funny for a preacher,” I said, locking my car and walking down the alley with Deak to where he had parked, bracing myself with my right hand on his left shoulder.

I was still woozy and he helped me into the car. As he pulled away from the curb, he finally asked, “So, now that the cops aren't here, who did this to you?”

“If I was a betting man, I'd say it was one of the regulars from the Crazy Horse Bar. I had a few words with a couple of them tonight and I think one of them followed me out of there. There's no other explanation for why nothing was taken from my car.”

“You went to the Crazy Horse? Why? Are you tired of living?”

“I needed to talk to Adrian; Pepper told me that was his hangout.”

Deak nodded. “It is. I've been trying to get him to quit hanging around there for years, but no luck. The last time I talked to him about it he told me to shut up and mind my own business.”

“That's our Adrian. A real sweetheart. How often do you talk to him?”

“Not too often. The church has an emergency food pantry and I take him a couple boxes of groceries once a month or so. If he knows it's me he won't come to the door. I think he's embarrassed that he's getting food from the church, so I just leave it on the porch. Pepper sends me money to give his brother—a couple hundred a month. Pepper's been very generous with Adrian and he's asked a couple of times if he should give him more, but I tell him it will just go to Adrian's liver. It's a sad situation. Pepper wants his brother back, but I don't think it's ever going to happen.”

“He looks awful.”

“Abusing yourself for upwards of thirty years will do that to a person.”

Just west of the Hollywood Shopping Plaza we pulled onto Powell Avenue and into the gravel parking lot behind a story-and-a-half bungalow that had been converted into a doctor's office. A pickup truck passed the building, slowing down while we walked to the back door. “Friends of yours?” Deak asked.

I pointed to my swollen mouth. “If this is any indication, I don't have many friends down here.”

The back door to the bungalow was unlocked. After we entered the tiny coat room, I slid the deadbolt into the jamb and watched to see if the pickup truck returned. It did not.

Doctor Oliver Judge appeared to be well into his seventies, a little hunched at the shoulders, eyebrows that would need hedge trimmers to control, and a pair of black glasses that sat crookedly on the bridge of his ample nose. I sat on the table in the examining room and he hummed as he worked his fingers around my jaws and poked gently at my nose and cheek. He moved my lips around with a tongue depressor, saying nothing until he asked, “Who did this to you?”

“I don't know.”

He pressed his thumbs against my ears and rolled my head around. “You haven't been running around with a wife that isn't your own, have you?”

“I'm not married.”

“That isn't what I asked you, but I'll take that as a no.” Deak smiled.

He took a disposable syringe from a drawer and began drawing a clear liquid from a bottle. “This is going to hurt like . . . ”

“A bee sting,” I said, completing the sentence I had heard from physicians all my life.

He flicked the syringe with an index finger and said, “No, it's going to hurt like the dickens.” Without qualm he flipped my lip up and jabbed me, and he wasn't lying. I twitched and closed my eyes while he worked the needle around my mouth. The relief, however, was almost immediate. There were tears in my eyes when he removed the needle and slipped a cotton roll into my lip. “Let's give that a few minutes to take hold,” he said, casually slipping the capped syringe into his shirt pocket while he shuffled out of the back room.

He returned a few minutes later and handed me a plastic bag of crushed ice, the top held shut with a green twist tie. “Put this on your nose and hold it there.”

“Is it broken?”

He shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. If you didn't break it, you've missed a wonderful opportunity. You'll have to get it checked out in a couple of days when the swelling goes down.” He walked back out.

“Not much for small talk, is he?” I asked.

“He's a good ol' boy. He runs a free clinic for me once a week at my outreach office downtown. He helps a lot of people and asks for little or nothing in return.” Deak eased himself into a metal chair with a cracked green seat cover. The years had not been particularly kind to Deak. His nose had become more pointed, but his chin had flattened out and become encased by soft jowls, giving his head the unfortunate shape of a gourd, a look that was exacerbated by his receding hairline. He had a blowzy complexion, his cheeks and neck pitted and scarred by his years-long battle with acne. Brown rings surrounded tired eyes. After he had settled into the chair, he slouched and rested his interlocked fingers across his chest. “So, what's he done?”

“Who?”

“Uncle Jack. That's why you're here, isn't it?”

The comment caught me off guard. I nodded and was about to go into an explanation when Doctor Judge came back into the
room, a curved stainless steel needle in his hands with stitching thread hanging from one end. Without comment he began stitching up the inside of my mouth. The numbing agent hadn't fully taken hold and his stitching hurt like hell, but I said nothing. After tying and snipping off the thread, he said, “Be careful what you eat for a couple of days. The stitches will dissolve in time.” He reached into his shirt pocket and produced a small envelope. “Take one of these every eight hours. They'll help you forget how bad your face hurts.”

“Thanks,” I said, swiping at my watering eyes with the back of my hand. “What do I owe you?”

“Just make a donation to Reverend Coultas's foundation and that will cover it.”

“Done,” I said. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

He was already heading back to his office. “You're welcome. See you Sunday, Reverend.”

I washed down one of the pain pills with a drink from the fountain, dribbling water down my numbed chin. We let ourselves out the back door and made our way across the dark lot to Deak's car. He managed to find every pothole in the lot and each bounce sent pain like an electric shock through my face. My lip throbbed with each beat of my heart, and I struggled to make sense of the attack. Was it the jumbo from the Crazy Horse? If so, what had he been after? It made no sense.

As we drove across Pleasant Heights and passed Union Cemetery, I turned my head away from Deak and through my own reflection in the passenger side window I could see the faint glow of downtown and the darkened hulk that had been the Fort Steuben Hotel, once the city's landmark property. I tried to remember what downtown had looked like in its heyday, when all the windows of the grand hotel were alight, the orange glow of the open hearth at Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel lit up the skies, and the floodlights of the mill reflected off the Ohio's waters, producing a shimmering show in the wake of passing barges. I could re-create the image in my mind and still smell the dirt and taste the sulfur, but it was difficult to believe that something as mighty as the U.S. steel industry—Big Steel—had crumbled in a few short decades. I asked, “So, how did you know this was about your uncle? Do you have some divine power or was it just a lucky guess?”

“Neither,” he said. “I talked to Pepper. He told me Uncle Jack was giving you some problems.”