THE FATE OF MARY MALLON

Chandler checked his watch. It was 6:23 A.M. Walt would be one of the first people aware of the bounty. Word spread fast, by afternoon every two bit scumbag and professional assassin in New York City would probably be on him if the bounty was north of $2,000.

Chandler hailed a taxi and took it to Penn. Station. He stood on line at the ticket counter. He would buy the first ticket to Philadelphia and wait there until he could plan his next move. He would call his mother from Philly so she wouldn’t worry.

“Chandler!” The voice was cheerful and friendly. And that should have been the tip-off.

Chandler turned and the line evaporated as Roofus Platts, a thick-nosed, wrinkled hitman Chandler knew well, took a large revolver out and pointed it at Chandler. In the middle of Penn. Station. In the middle of the morning. As broad daylight streamed in through the cathedral windows.

Somehow Chandler was able to keep his sphincter closed and simultaneous dive behind the thick, five foot marble base of a lamppost. He scrambled to his feet and ran as fast as he possibly could up the marble stairs and through the doors.

Outside now, Chandler turned the corner and ran full out down the block, across the street and down into the crowded rush hour subway station. Pressed into the car like a sardine being made into a waffle, Chandler was finally able to breathe. The smell was thick with body odor and the heavy, fragrant spices immigrants cooked with and, apparently, substituted for soap and water. Chandler tried to think. Grand Central would likely also be staked out. This was getting serious. He decided to go see his mommy.

-

Mother didn’t answer the bell at his childhood home in the Doily Gardens section of Brooklyn. Chandler took the key from under the matt and let himself in.

The house had a very distinctive smell of bleach and cookies that was both sentimental and suffocating. He walked down the hall to his old bedroom. The ceiling of the closet had a panel that led into a small attic. Chandler removed the board and felt up there with his hand, afraid any second he’d touch something hairy with long sharp front teeth. He felt the oily rag and pulled it down. He peeled back the red, soiled fabric. It was his father’s cavalry pistol from the Spanish War. The one that the old man had chosen to spend his last moments on earth with instead of his only son. Chandler hadn’t seen it since he was 13, when Father Simon gave it to him after the reception. Chandler had taken it home, cleaned it and hid it in the closet. He told his mother he threw it away.

Ben Chandler never spoke of his time as one of the famous Rough Riders, marauding through Cuba under the command of Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt. Chandler knew from his mother some of the less glamorous aspects of the story. After the Battle of San Juan Hill, the Rough Riders were bogged down in Cuba, being gunned down more efficiently by malaria and various tropical fevers than they had by the Spanish garrison. It was over a month before the U.S. War Department approved the evacuation of the regiment to Long Island where they were held in quarantine for another month. The men, starved and mad from months of disease and death in isolation, staged theatrical productions of Shakespeare plays. But the language and general sweep of the stories suffered from their state. Hamlet survived their version, furiously masturbating until Fortinbras entered and promptly shot himself in the thigh. Which was apparently an ad-lib.

Chandler’s father was a hard, quiet, stone-faced man. When he came home from work at a plant on the East River he would usually go to a bar and come home late, stumbling into the kitchen chairs. Still, the man was a solid consistent rock of withheld affection and it was a mortal shock to Chandler when he was suddenly gone. He hadn’t even seemed sad.